And an Equation Heaven-Sent
by The Black Sun's Daughter
Summary: His mother was dead, they were several states away from home, and his father was already halfway to becoming a functioning alcoholic, minus the 'functioning' part. Oh, yeah, Jacob Stone's new life in Portland, Oregon, was off to a brilliant start. (High school AU, all-characters)
1. And the Heart is Sick

**A/N: on** **dæmons. In this fic, the characters will have different dæmons than they did in my other dæmonfics, which is why there's a different icon; it's how I separate them. Everyone's** **dæmon will be listed/explained at the bottom of the first chapter they appear in. Also, i** **n the HDM universe, people with same-sex dæmons are very unusual, as it's sometimes indicative of having a special gift or unique quality, like having second sight (or having an IQ of 190, or being a synesthete, or being 'totally awesome'). Also, it may indicate homosexuality, though it's never been proven, but it still inspires a lot of negative connotations that people focus on more than the positive.**

 **WARNING:** **everyone knows that not everyone's family life is perfect. There will be instances physical/verbal abuse, alcoholism, drug addiction, and assault throughout this fic, sometimes just mentioned, sometimes explicit scenes. If that's some sort of trigger for anyone, you might not want to read on.**

* * *

His first day of school in Portland, Oregon, and Jacob Stone was already thinking about taking a flying leap off the St. Johns Bridge. His mother was dead, they were several states away from home, and his father was already halfway to becoming a functioning alcoholic, minus the 'functioning' part.

During lunch, he slunk out a side door and made a break for the library, Laghu fluttering wildly after him. It was the one place he knew would always be empty during lunch in every school, and nobody would look for him there. He couldn't stand being in the cafeteria for another hot second, the surf-roar of noise that smelled like formaldehyde carpet, floor wax, damp wool, and wet concrete, probably due to the constant goddamned _rain_ , not to mention the exhalation of two thousand kids, sweaty stocking feet, and food that'd been pried from under Ronald McDonald's bumpers.

He staggered into the library, his foot catching on that little ridge that separated the tile hallway from the carpeting, nearly falling on his ass. Laghu finally caught him, burrowing down into his clothes, and he kept one hand pressed lightly over his dæmon as he made his way over to one of the empty tables and sat down heavily. The strap of his bag slipped off his shoulder. It thumped to the ground and vomited his notebooks onto the floor; he didn't notice it.

He slumped forward until his forehead was pressed against the smooth faux-wood grain surface of the table, staring down at the floor between his boots. Good God, he had his boots on. He didn't remember getting dressed this morning, his body just going through all the motions while his mind drowned. What was he wearing? His boots, laced and tied, a miracle. He could feel socks, too. Jeans, the ones Mama didn't like him to wear to school because they were wearing through at the knees. He plucked at the hem of his t-shirt, and it was red. He was wearing his flannel shirt over it, and his welder's jacket. Laghu was tucked into the breast pocket of his flannel shirt, he could feel his soul trembling there.

Jacob closed his eyes, arms wrapped around his middle as the school food fought to make a reappearance; he'd only managed about two bites before the panic hit and it was struggling for freedom. _Don't you dare throw up, Jacob Stone. Don't you dare throw up on your first day._

Laghu heard the voice first, even through his jacket: a soft, feminine voice reading oh-so-quietly elsewhere in the stacks. Wrestling his nausea back under control, Jacob realised with a jolt that he recognised the material.

 _"Be near me when my light is low,_  
 _When the blood creeps, and the nerves prick_  
 _And tingle; and the heart is sick,_  
 _And all the wheels of Being slow._

 _Be near me when the sensuous frame_  
 _Is rack'd with pangs that conquer trust;_  
 _And Time, a maniac scattering dust,_  
 _And Life, a Fury slinging flame."_

He dragged himself upright and pushed to his feet, following the sound of the quiet voice almost in a trance, shuffling around the stacks.

There was a girl there, sitting on the floor with her legs outstretched, the book propped open on her lap, leaning back into the corner as she read softly from the pages. Her dæmon was lying curled next to her, just a mass of dark fur that he couldn't find the will to identify, so he didn't bother. Exhaling slowly, he leant against one of the standing bookshelves, eyes closed as he listened to her. His lips formed the words with her, but he didn't speak aloud, not wanting to break the quiet spell.

 _"Be near me when my faith is dry,_  
 _And men the flies of latter spring,_  
 _That lay their eggs, and sting and sing_  
 _And weave their petty cells and die._

 _Be near me when I fade away,_  
 _To point the term of human strife,_  
 _And on the low dark verge of life_  
 _The twilight of eternal day."_

Her voice cut off abruptly, and when she didn't keep reading, Jacob pried his eyes open. She was staring at him, clutching the book against her chest like a shield, eyes wide. She put one hand on her dæmon's head, which was staring at him too, niceties be damned, but he couldn't find energy to care. "Tennyson. 'In Memoriam A.H.H.,'" he mumbled. "Finished it in 1849, wrote it as a requiem for his friend Alfred Henry Hallam, who died in 1833 from a cerebral hemorrhage." He was blowing his cover big-time, but he didn't give a flying fuck at the moment. Let everybody find out that Jacob Stone wasn't just another dumb-as-dirt hick from some jerkwater town; what did he care?

His legs weren't up to supporting him anymore, so he slid down to sit on the floor in a mirroring position to her; his heavy boots ended up right next to her shiny black Mary Janes, almost touching. Feeling Laghu squirm out of his shirt pocket and up to his neck, he mumbled another stanza,

" _I hold it true, whate'er befall;  
_ _I feel it when I sorrow most;  
_ _'Tis better to have loved and lost  
_ _Than never to have loved at all."_

Jacob let out a sharp, harsh bark of laughter, but it wasn't a good kind of laugh. "That's some bullshit, that is. Utter...bullshit."

The girl closed the book slowly, setting it down next to her. "Are you alright?" she asked, her voice pitched low and soft, like if she spoke too loud he might break.

 _Alright? No, darlin', I'm pretty far from it. My mama's dead, my pop's crawled into his bottle and doesn't look set to come out anytime soon, my whole life's been uprooted and dragged halfway across the country. Oh, and by the way, I'm a genius with an IQ of about 190 and I know more about art, history, and architecture than anybody in this goddamn school, but don't tell my old man, he'd sooner have me die in an accident on the oilrig than have me be some artsy, brainiac queer, which he already thinks I might be because my_ _dæmon is male,_ he thought.

Aloud, he said, "No."

She frowned a little, then pulled her feet in, rose up onto her knees, and scooted over to sit down next to him, almost close enough to touch. Her dæmon stood up with her, and holy _shit,_ he was the biggest hyena that Jacob had ever seen, probably as high as a man's chest at the shoulders, the heavy bone-crushing jaws resting across her thighs, dark eyes rolling up to look at him, and he stared right back, though he shouldn't. It was part of the unspoken rules—you didn't look at another person's dæmon without permission, you didn't speak to another person's dæmon unless you were friends, and you _never_ touched another person's dæmon unless you were the closest of lovers. "What's wrong?" she asked.

He nearly told her to fuck off, he wasn't up for this today, but the words lodged in his throat and refused to come out, unwilling to cuss at a lady. Mama raised him better than that. Laghu pressed harder into the hollow of his collarbone, like he wanted to somehow meld them into one being, and Jacob let out a slow breath.

"My mama's dead," he said, and his voice was flat, empty when he said it. It was the first time he'd said it aloud, and it didn't hurt as much as he thought it would. Or maybe he was too numb to notice it hurting anymore.

He felt her body twitch slightly next to him, saw the hyena dæmon's stubby tail flick, and he prayed to every deity he knew that she wouldn't apologise or try to hug him. If anybody touched him right now, he might break and lose it entirely, which he would _not_ allow to happen, no sir. But she didn't ask, didn't offer worthless condolences that didn't make his mama any less dead, and didn't try to hug him, despite it being the traditional girl response.

Instead, she simply opened up the book again, began turning pages until she found another poem, and began reading it instead. Jacob leant back against the cool metal of the bookshelf with eyes closed and just listened to her read. A dry sob caught him unawares, and he bit the inside of his mouth until he tasted blood to hold in anymore sounds, swallowing back tears. He was _not_ going to cry, not here, not in school where anybody could see him. It was bad enough he was acting this way, but if he cried, Pop would cut a switch faster than he could say 'sorry.'

She didn't stumble, just kept reading with a soft, steady cadence that helped him pull it together, forcing his lungs to work, settling his roiling stomach.

When the bell rang signaling the end of lunch hour, Jacob managed to stand up without tripping. "Hey. Hey, are going to make it?" the girl asked, standing before he could offer her a hand up. Her voice was so adult, no teenage bluster or stumbling there.

He blinked. He had his gloves on, and there was somebody talking to him. The world slid into place inside his head, sounds and colours no longer just sliding past like tinted raindrops across glass. The fluorescent lights gleamed on her hair, which was a brilliant, vivid shade of red that couldn't come from any hairdresser's bottle, and suddenly it seemed like the most beautiful colour he'd ever seen in his life. Laghu crawled across his jacket collar, silky fur tickling under his ear, and he nodded. "Yeah. Yeah, I'll make it," he answered and actually meant it.

She nodded once, one delicate hand resting on her dæmons' head. "Okay." Turning away from him, she replaced the poetry book on the shelf, _Great Poems of the 19th Century,_ grabbed her bag off the floor, and walked towards the door, the hyena slinking along behind her, almost comically large and bulky next to her delicate build.

"Hey," he called, and she paused at the door. "Thanks."

She shrugged her narrow shoulders. "First one's free," she answered, then ducked out the door.

He actually laughed. Call it a miracle.

As he was shoving his notebooks back into his backpack, Laghu fluttered up into his hair. "I like her," he said. Jacob nodded in agreement, and they both knew that they'd made their first friend here in Portland. There were certain things that you just can't do without becoming friends, and sitting there with someone as they grieve, knowing when to simply _be there_ instead of offering worthless words, was one of those things.

He didn't even know her name.

* * *

Jake Stone – Laghu, Kitti's hog-nosed bat, _Craseonycteris thonglongyai._ Also called the bumblebee bat, it is the world's smallest bat and arguably the smallest mammal as well. Adults have a body length of only an inch and weigh about two grams. The bat is symbol of good luck in Chinese culture, also a symbol of longevity, immortality, and night, but also of hidden knowledge, secrets, and good parenting. Laghu is the Hindi translation for "miniature."


	2. Sharks Are Swimming

"Maybe she doesn't take the bus," Laghu offered in his usual less-than-helpful way as he burrowed down in the pocket of Jacob's flannel shirt. Usually the wee bat liked to cling to his hair or on his shirt collar, but the air was heavy and tasted like iron in that way that meant it was going to rain soon. And when someone wasn't even the size of a mouse, a little rain was a big deal.

"Sure," he mumbled, leaning against the wall and twisting the strap of his bag in both hands, watching the masses file off the yellow prison busses into the building, looking for a telltale gleam of red hair, the spotted bulk of a hyena.

Laghu poked his head out of the pocket, oversized ears pricking. "We can find her at lunch. Or look in the library again."

"Shut _up,"_ Jacob sighed.

They lived close enough that he could walk to the high school instead of taking the bus, and today he'd left early, hoping to find the red-haired girl before classes started. He was aware that it was probably a little creepy, just standing here watching people, but it didn't bother him. Maybe, if everybody else thought that he was weird, then nobody would bother him. He could be left alone and wouldn't have to deal with the thousand-and-one questions that came with being the new kid and the fake sympathy thick as Crisco when they found out his mother was gone.

It didn't hurt as much today, but that didn't mean anything. It came and went in waves, except it didn't creep up on him the way tides inched up the shoreline. It slammed into him out of nowhere, a raw, burning reminder that Mama wasn't waiting for him at home to ask him if he liked the rain yet that sucker punched him in the gut. But he was getting the hang of relishing those spaces between bouts of pain, of remembering how to be a part of the world again. Today was shaping up to be a better day than yesterday...but then again, first hour hadn't even started yet.

A gleam of bright red caught his eye, and he turned towards it automatically, standing on his toes a little. There was the girl, last one off the prison bus, with her dæmon loping along behind her like a huge spotted shadow. Jacob let out a breath he hadn't realised he was holding and made his way against the crowds to catch up to her. "Hey," he called. Laghu fluttered up to his shoulder in order to meet her.

She leapt about half a foot out of her skin, as if he'd jumped out at her instead of just walking over. "Hey," she squeaked in a small voice, seeming genuinely surprised that he was there talking to her.

"Hey. Erm, I...I didn't get your name yesterday," Jacob said, realising for the first time that he didn't have any idea what the hell to say to her. Laghu sniggered, and he resisted the urge to flick the little pest off his shoulder.

She swallowed hard and brushed her hair back behind her ears, no longer looking quite so much like a deer caught in the high beams. "Oh. I'm Cassandra. Cassandra Cillian. An-and this is Mel," she replied, resting her hand on her dæmon's head.

"How ya doin'?" the hyena asked, grinning with lots of sharp white teeth, and the dæmon's voice was _female._

He blinked a few times, surprised both by the fact that she had a female dæmon and that her dæmon had just spoken to him, boundaries be damned. "F-fine. I'm Jacob Stone. Laghu," he introduced, gesturing; Laghu fluttered one paper-thin wing in the closest thing to a wave a bat could make. "Anyways, thank you for yesterday. I mean that." He hitched his bag further up one shoulder, praying to God he didn't look as uncomfortable as he felt. Bad enough he was lurking outside for her like a stalker, he didn't need to look a complete fool.

But she actually blushed a little bit, looking towards the ground. He fell into step beside her, having to shorten his stride a bit to match hers. "It's alright," she murmured back. "So, uhm, what classes do you have? Maybe we'll see each other later."

He didn't remember all of his teachers' names yet, so he shoved one hand in his pocket and found his crumpled schedule, smoothing out the paper as best he could without tearing it. Cassandra read it over while they made it up the steps into the hallway, adjusting to the ebb and flow of students around her almost on autopilot. She stopped walking, and he paused with her next to an English class; probably her first hour. "Well, we've got AP History together second hour. And after lunch, there's geometry, but that's all," she said, handing it back over to him.

"Oh." Jacob shoved the schedule back in his pocket, trying not to look too disappointed with that. But two classes was better than nothing, he supposed. "Alright, well, see ya in history, Cassie," he replied before diving back into the masses.

He risked a glance back and saw her standing there with a puzzled expression on her face as she mouthed 'Cassie' before he lost sight of her. Huh. Girl acted like nobody ever called her by a nickname before.

Jacob managed to make it to first hour before the bell rang, sliding into his desk just as the teacher turned towards the class. He waited for the slick, oily feeling to start up again in his gut, that crawling, prickling, burning borderline-panic that'd nearly sent him running out of the building yesterday, but it wasn't there. One class down, five more to go. And he had two of them with Cassandra to look forward to.

* * *

Ms. Morgana Fey taught AP History.

Unlike every other female teacher he'd ever had, she wasn't old enough to be someone's grandmother, wasn't too timid to say 'boo' to a mouse, and wasn't in any way frumpy. She was red-haired, honey-eyed, and smoking hot. She was probably only in her mid-twenties, and she cycled through three dresses, one red, one black, and one teal, all of which were just this side of appropriate for school wear, with heels to match. Today it was the red, matching her lipstick and her nails, which were curled around a yardstick like it was a punishing rod. Her dæmon's name was Mordred and took the form of a _huge_ black raven that was always gripping the little metal perch on her desk, eyeing up other dæmons like they were lunch.

The other students called her Mad-Dog Morgan behind her back, and she could smell weakness.

There were two species of teacher: the soft and the hard. Soft teachers might genuinely want to help their students, or they might have been broken in. They were usually skittish around their students, particularly high-school boys. Hard teachers were another thing entirely. They were sharks – machines made for killing and eating, with a finely tuned sense for blood in the water. And Fey was absolutely one of the hard teachers. She was probably the starring figure in several of his male classmates' fantasies, but she reminded Jacob of a snake, beautiful but cold and deadly and coiled to strike.

Today, though, he couldn't bother to pretend to pay attention. History was his best subject, and he'd already flipped through the curriculum, knew every one of the time periods they were going to cover. He had this class down square. All he had to do now was just stay awake.

Jacob propped an elbow on the desk and rested his chin on his fist, making shapes in the smears of chalk on the blackboard just to have something to do, his pen resting limp in his opposite hand, sitting against a fresh page in his notebook. Three minutes into the lecture, and a slip of paper landed on the edge of his desk. Surprised, he glanced over to Cassandra, who completed her stretch as if nothing untoward had prompted it; Mel, however, was grinning with all her sharp teeth underneath the desk, stubby tail flicking.

Laghu was almost wriggling in excitement as he slid the little note towards him and bent forward slightly to read it under the pretense of actually writing notes. She had very feminine handwriting, her cursive neat and perfectly legible, on the very edge of being calligraphy.

 _I give up. I'm going back to a real science next quarter. Quarks or bust._

Jacob fought a smile, the first real smile he'd had for days, glanced up to make sure that Fey's back was turned and Mordred's eyes were elsewhere, then hastily scribbled an answer beneath her words: _Notes in class? In the age of technology and text messaging? I salute you, ma'am._ He leant forward and slid it to the edge of her desk.

She grinned as she read it, but instead of passing it back, she simply tilted the paper so he could see what she'd written on the bottom corner: _O.G._

He had to bury his head in his arms to keep from laughing aloud.

"Mr. Stone?"

Laghu muttered a quiet, "Shit," and hid in his shirt as he sat upright, the smile gone in a split second. Fey had turned on him, and the sudden silence in the class meant all eyes were on him. Aw, damn.

"Were we _paying attention,_ Mr. Stone?" He could've stropped a knife on Fey's tone. A tide of whispers rippled through the room, most of them along the lines of "Mad-Dog's found the new kid," and out the corner of his eye, he saw Cassandra shrink down in her chair. Fey had picked her target for the next thirty minutes of class, and it was him.

Jacob swallowed hard; Laghu scrambled down into his shirt pocket to avoid the beady-eyed stare of Mordred, who was eyeing him like a particularly tasty-looking snack. He knew that he shouldn't say anything – hard teachers were bullies. If he stayed silent and wide-eyed, she'd just think he was an idiot and move on, but if he put up any sign of a struggle, then she'd have an adversary to break before semester's end. _Fuck it, might as well jump in with both feet._ "Fort Sumter."

Fey's honey-coloured eyes narrowed, and the predatory gleam in them reminded him of a cottonmouth, puffing itself up to look bigger and scarier before it opened its silky white mouth and made that awful ratcheting noise.

"You asked where the first shots of the Civil War were fired. Fort Sumter, near Charleston, South Carolina, April 12 to April 13 of 1861," he said, not having to force his voice into a bored monotone.

The whispers turned into that particular kind of quiet laughter that hard teachers hated the most; Cassandra was staring at him with something akin to awed delight, Mel's stubby tail flicking double-time.

Fey stayed eyeing him, and he curled his hands in fists under the desk. He was still an unknown quantity at this point, which meant he might actually get away with it, but if not, hell, he was raring to go. If the bitch wanted to tussle, he could do that, and having to deal with his old man's temper when he got home would be worth it. Who knew sophomore AP History could be so much _fun?_

But, to his almost-disappointment, Fey visibly decided to pick on somebody else, but Mordred's fixed glare promised retribution later. Jacob let out a slow breath and slid down a little in his chair, surprised at how much he'd wound up. "Thank you, Mr. Stone." She turned away from him, tapping the end of the yardstick on the edge of her desk almost meditatively.

The kid in front of him – a small, skinny Korean boy with a sleek gold monkey dæmon gripping one arm – shifted in his desk, making the crappy plastic seat creak.

 _D_ _on't move,_ Jacob wanted to warn him. _She's looking for her next victim. Stay completely still and she might not see you._ He almost reached forward to smack the kid on the back of the head, just to save him, since he didn't give a goddamn whether or not Fey sent him to the office or gave him detention, but deciding that dealing with Pop's temper wasn't worth _that_ much, he stayed still. Fey might just circle back around to him anyways.

The kid shuffled again, the golden monkey reaching up to pluck at his collar with small, gnarled black fingers.

Mordred's shiny bead eyes fixed on the monkey, and Fey turned around. "Mr. Jones."

 _Told ya,_ Jacob thought.

"Since Mr. Stone has been so kind to give us the _start_ of the Civil War, perhaps you can give us the _causes_ of the Civil War," she said, reaching out to run a red-lacquered fingernail over her dæmon's glossy black feathers. "I'm certain you were taking notes, after all."

The kid's shoulders went tense, and the monkey stiffened under Mordred's creepy staring. Blood in the water.

"Causes of the Civil War," the kid repeated, and Jacob was surprised to hear a thick Australian accent. What the hell was this kid doing _here?_ An exchange student, maybe? "Causes. Right. Totally. Uhm..."

Fey had the kid then, and the next twenty minutes of class, she ragged on him until Jacob actually felt guilty for pissing her off in the first place. The kid, Jones, eventually stuttered out the right answers – whenever Fey let him get a word in edgewise – but she didn't let up an inch. By the time the bell rang, even the back of his neck had turned red, and his dæmon was covering its face with both hands.

The hallways were the usual crush of students, drifting to move in packs the way horses herded by colour. Jocks growling and snapping, cheerleaders simpering at their elbows, everybody else just trying to survive until the next class and make it to freedom. A small contingent of stoners congregated around a dented locker, and Jacob was certain he saw a brown paper bag change hands. He glanced around – not a teacher in sight. Still. Cassandra promised to meet him at lunch in the library before heading the opposite direction as his next class. She made somewhat better progress than other kids did, simply because Mel stayed right in front of her, grinning and chuckling at other dæmons in a hoarse, creepy way that made everybody else skirt around her.

Before he could get more than three steps away from Fey's torture chamber, the skinny Australian kid was standing in front of him. "Oi, cowboy. Thanks for nothin' back there," he snapped.

"You're welcome," Jacob answered dryly, even though Laghu bristled at the 'cowboy' jab.

"Look, mate, I don't care if you want to get in a pissin' match with Mad-Dog Morgan, but don't get the rest of us involved in it. Maybe have some consideration for your fellow students like me an' Aur," the kid said, not getting out of his way. The kid's dæmon – Aur, presumably – was bristling on his shoulder, clearly angry at being embarrassed in front of the whole class; Laghu bared his small, needle-sharp fangs and hissed right back.

"Well, _mate,_ maybe you and Aur should take notes next time," he sniped back. He was not in the mood for this.

The kid made a face like he'd licked something sour. "I'm Ezekiel Jones, cowboy. And Ezekiel Jones does _not_ take notes."

 _Sweet Jesus, did he actually just refer to himself in third-person?_ "Ezekiel Jones ought to get bent," Jacob snapped. Using the fact that he was six inches taller and probably twice as heavy to his advantage, he shoved past the little smartass roughly, nearly knocking him over and leaving the kid sputtering and cursing angrily behind him.

By the time he got to civics class, his temper had cooled, and that oily feeling had started creeping back up on him. Jacob sank down into another crappy little desk and buried his head in his arms. Laghu nuzzled behind his ear in a show of comfort, murmuring quietly. He didn't bother lifting his head when the bell rang again and class started, even though it wasn't really a class anymore, just a giant waste of time. He'd seen more real-live civics on afternoon CNN...if 'civics' meant 'blowhards with expensive hair.'

So...he had one friend, and two likely enemies in both teacher and student bodies. And it was only his second day.

"Don't you just _love_ being the new kid?" Laghu asked in a half-hearted chuckle.

Jacob only groaned.

* * *

Cassandra Cillian – Melpomene, called "Mel," spotted hyena, _Crocuta crocuta_. Hyenas have a notorious reputation as being cowardly, stupid, ugly, and gluttonous. However, the hyena is one of Africa's most successful predators due to its adaptability, and they are highly intelligent, outperforming chimpanzees in problem-solving tests. They are matriarchal animals, where the females are larger and dominate males. Hyenas are considered symbols of witchcraft, strength, and cunning. Melpomene is the name of the Greek muse of tragedy.

Ezekiel Jones – Aur, golden lion tamarin, _Leontopithecus rosalia._ Monkeys have been seen as symbols of good-natured mischief and pranks, able to be both wise and foolish at the same time. In the Chinese Zodiac, people born in the year of the monkey are supposed to be quick-witted, confident, and agile, but also vain, selfish, and egotistical. In the wild, monkeys are known to steal from humans, and they are also the only species other than humans to use tools. Aur is the Romanian translation for "gold."

Morgana Fey – Mordred, common raven, _Corvus corax._ Ravens are commonly associated with witchcraft and ill omens, being all-black and carrion feeders. The bird's ability to mimic human noises gave rise to belief that ravens are all-knowing, personified in Norse myth, Hugin and Munin—Thought and Memory—who told Odin all the secrets of mankind. They are also harbingers of death, personified in the Celtic Battle Goddess Morrigan, who took the form of a raven. In Arthurian legend, Mordred is the name of the traitor who fought and fatally wounded King Arthur, sometimes named as Arthur's illegitimate son by Morgan le Fay.


	3. Trust In Me

"Ahem. Uhm. Excuse me?"

Jacob looked up to see a gangly boy that looked like he was made of all angles with flyaway hair and big dark eyes behind wire-framed glasses standing over him, a black-and-white bird bouncing from shoulder to shoulder. He wore a lanyard around his neck with one of those little laminated cards all the teachers had around his neck, meaning he was one of those overachieving students that got made into office lackeys so they didn't drive their teachers nuts. "What?"

"Erm, Ms. Collins would like to see you. You're, uh, you're Jacob Stone, right? The new student?" the boy asked, shifting his weight from foot to foot, an almost birdlike hopping motion that oddly emulated his dæmon.

"Yeah, I am," he replied slowly.

"Great. I-I'll show you to her office."

Getting to his feet, he slung his bag over one shoulder and followed after the strange boy, wondering who Ms. Collins was. It wasn't any of his teachers, and wasn't the principal a guy? Damn, his old man was gonna kill him if he was in trouble already. As they walked, the boy kept talking, blathering on about everything and nothing at the same time, nothing that Jacob could keep up with anyways. Somewhere in the middle of it, he paused to breathe and said, "Oh, by the way, I'm Flynn, and this is Koyi," with a gesture to his dæmon, who chirruped at him brightly before he was off again, switching from one topic to the next without ever checking at the gate. Jacob didn't even bother listening, still wondering what he could be called into the office for.

When they came into the front office, Flynn told him to 'wait right there just a sec' and scurried off down the hall that hosted all the faculty-only offices. Before he could even think about sitting down, though, the gangly boy was back, waving him forward. "He's like a hummingbird on crack," Laghu whispered in his ear, and Jacob nodded agreement, following Flynn.

They bypassed both the principal and vice-principal's office, much to his relief and confusion, but Jacob dug his heels in when Flynn led him to the end of the hall and the only door left; the little lacquered sign on the door said Mabel Collins, Guidance Counselor. _What in the actual fuck?_

Flynn didn't notice his sudden halt at all, just knocked on the door once before opening it. "I found him, Ms. Collins."

"Thank you, Flynn. Oh, here, will you take these up to Principal Dulaque's office for me?" answered a woman's soft voice from inside.

Flynn ducked in and came out a half-second later with a sheaf of papers clasped in one arm. "You can go in," he said, then gave Jacob what was probably supposed to be an encouraging little push against one shoulder before bounding away, with Koyi flying over his head in a flurry of metallic greenish-black feathers. Kid definitely ought to have a hummingbird for a dæmon, not a magpie.

Jacob stood there for a moment longer, gripping the strap of his bag in a death-hold and wondering what would happen if he made a break for it. Laghu hissed for him to move his ass, and he was starting to take a step back when Ms. Collins called out, "I know you're still there, please come in."

Dammit. Taking a deep breath, he stepped forward into the office. Ms. Collins was a pretty woman, thirties or so, with curling dark hair and a round, soft-featured face. Sitting down, it was hard to see if she was tall or not, but he didn't think so. Her office practically screamed 'therapist without the fat paycheck,' designed to be almost painfully neutral and unthreatening, right down to the bland watercolor painting that was on the wall of every waiting room and lobby in the world. A sand-coloured flop-eared rabbit lolloped around her desk. She offered him a mild, pleasant smile. "Jacob. Please, come in. Don't worry, I won't bite," she told him, and he almost winced at the attempt to be humourous.

He took a single step into the office. Who'd turned him in, he wondered. Surely not Cassandra. She seemed to get him more than anybody else did, she wouldn't do this. Jones, maybe? No, the kid didn't know enough about him, but maybe he'd bullshitted a teacher into believing that he did. Little prick seemed like the kind to hold a petty grudge like that, especially after being made a fool of by Mad-Dog Morgan.

"Please, have a seat," she offered, gesturing to the matching chairs that were sat facing her desk.

 _How about no?_ It was on the tip of his tongue, but he bit it back. Being a smartass would probably only get him in deeper. He sat down. The chairs were more comfortable than any of the desks, but that was part of the trap. It was the electric chair, but made comfy so that way he wouldn't protest when the electrodes were stuck on.

"How long have you been here now, Jacob? Or would you prefer Jake?"

His gorge rose, and he had to swallow twice just make sure he wouldn't puke on her shiny, neatly arranged desk. In his shirt pocket, Laghu whimpered and covered his ears with his wings. _Dear Jesus, don't call me that._ "Jacob," he answered through gritted teeth when he knew that he could speak again without his voice breaking. "Probably two weeks."

She nodded mildly. Woman seemed to do every damn thing mildly. "Well, Jacob, I hope that you like it here. Ms. Fey has expressed some concern to me, though, about how you've been adjusting."

Jacob's eyes widened a degree. _Fey?_ Mad-Dog Morgan had turned him in? Hot damn. The bitch played dirty. "It's fine," he answered, which was about the most noncommittal answer he could get away with, and from the small furrow that appeared between her eyebrows, she knew it, too.

"I want you to know that you can trust me, Jacob. Anything you say here is between us," she offered in a voice so gentle that it made him feel like something sour had curdled in his stomach.

Which had to be the biggest crock of shit he'd ever heard, but he didn't say anything, just clamped his jaw shut and fixed his gaze on a point just beside her left ear. Her lips were still moving, but he wasn't listening anymore, had stopped listening right after the word 'trust'. Her stupid rabbit dæmon had sprang up onto the desk next to her elbow, pink nose twitching in his direction, and he wondered what she'd say if he told her that he used to hunt rabbits like that back in Oklahoma, that he used a .22 rifle so he didn't blow them into red mist because Mama made a wicked rabbit stew and the pelts were damned soft, too. Might be so damn pleasant to him then.

Jacob resisted the urge to reach in his shirt pocket and run his fingertip over Laghu's back, stroking the silky-soft fur that was as fine as down, just so he could have the electric tingle of _contact_ to soothe him. He didn't want this woman to know that she was making him uncomfortable, even as she kept talking white noise at him, and he wished that she would just shut the hell up so he could leave.

Ms. Collins said something about dæmons, and he refocused on her words enough to catch the last part of her sentence, like some kind of weird Doppler slide. "...that she hides whenever someone tries to talk to you, Jacob, that – "

"He," Jacob cut her off sharply.

She blinked at him in a vaguely surprised sort of way. "Excuse me?"

"You said that _she_ hides. He. My dæmon is a he."

Her dark lashes fluttered almost imperceptibly, and he felt a stab of pride that he'd gotten one up on this infuriatingly mild-mannered, soft-spoken woman. Laghu snickered. "Oh. I-I see," she said at last, recovering from the surprise of meeting another person with a same-sex dæmon, assuming she already knew about Cassandra and Mel. He'd been the only one in his whole damn town, and they'd traveled to goddamn _Oregon_ before he met someone else. Fair to assume that Ms. Mabel Collins wasn't used to that. "That's very uncommon, Jacob, even today. I'm sure that you already know that, and I know that young people can be very unfriendly towards others who are different, especially in such an...unusual way."

Jacob bit the inside of his mouth until he tasted blood. _Unfriendly_ was one way to put it, but it sure as shit didn't beat the ways that people with same-sex dæmons used to be treated. In the Dark Ages, it was considered irrefutable proof that a person was a witch and in league with the devil. Burning at the stake, being thrown in rivers tied to anvils, shut in barrels full of nails and rolled until the screams stopped... Yeah, he could take some heckling over _that_.

"If you ever wanted, I'm sure that I could introduce you to another student that's like you," the woman went on, and the thought abruptly came to him that maybe Cassandra had been forced to endure a torture session in here, sitting in one of these damnably comfortable chairs, making sure that she 'adjusted' well. "As a matter of fact, I'm sure that Flynn would be happy to show you around a little more, if you wanted."

 _Flynn? Not Cassie?_ Jacob thought about the grasshopper-like boy and his boundless energy from this curious new angle. Koyi could be a male name, certainly, and he hadn't actually heard the other dæmon speak at all. Maybe that was why the oddball was an office lackey. Cassandra was small, but Mel was big enough and certainly scary enough to keep away anyone that tried screwing around with them. Flynn certainly wasn't a fighter, and Jacob could easily see him being subjected to 'unfriendly' attention, but you couldn't beat up the kid with the office pass.

He made a vague noise of assent just to please Ms. Collins.

She was eyeing him up again, and he had to fight not to squirm under her gaze. He knew without a doubt now that Ms. Mabel Collins was one of the soft-teacher types. She actually cared about her students, and that was what made it so easy to hate her. There was a line between trying to actually help someone and being just damn patronizing, and she flirted with that line too much without even realising she was doing it, going from helpful to annoying. He knew that she meant well, but that didn't stop her words from going down like sour milk. Christ, he'd rather take another round with Mad-Dog Morgan than sitting in this woman's office for another hot second.

Mercy came in the form of the bell ringing, sounding oddly muffled in the offices. Ms. Collins let out a soft sigh and said, "You can go, Jacob. Don't forget what I said, though. Anytime you need to talk, I'm available. You can trust me."

Jacob winced and mumbled something that might've been a 'thanks' under his breath, then shot up out of his chair and bolted. Laghu fluttered out of his pocket to circle around his head in a flutter of paper-thin wings, squeaking at a nearly inaudible pitch, "Can you _believe_ that? Who even _says_ shit like that?"

"Dunno," he muttered under his breath as he pushed his way back out into the hall.

"Mad-Dog plays dirty," Laghu declared as he resumed his usual place, gripping to Jacob's shirt collar with small claws, close enough to speak in his ear without being overheard.

Geometry class was on the opposite side of the campus than the office, and he barely made it into his desk before the bell rang for class to start again. He was in the very last row, all the way in the back of the class, sitting right next to Cassandra. It was obvious that the back row was strictly for the undesirables, as there was a no-man's land separating them from everyone else in the form of several empty desks.

As he dropped his bag to the floor and grabbed a notebook, Cassandra leant over and slipped a candy bar onto his desk. When he glanced over to her in baffled curiosity, she murmured in a low voice, "I heard you got called to the office. Guidance counselor?"

He made a face and nodded; clearly she _had_ received the same treatment. "Thanks," he replied in a hushed voice. He'd missed lunch, and he was just realising how hungry he actually was.

Cassandra offered him a tiny smile. "First one's free."

* * *

Flynn Carsen – Koyi, black-billed magpie, _Pica hudsonia._ Magpies are considered one of the most intelligent animals in the world, and is the only non-mammal to recognise itself in a mirror test. Magpies are known for being thieving birds, as they often steal brightly coloured or shiny objects, but in Korean culture, the magpie is a harbinger of good fortune, a provider of development and prosperity. Koyi is the Hausa translation for "learn."

Mabel Collins – Mheni, Holland lop rabbit, _Oryctolagus cuniculus._ As pets, they are easy to train, generally calm, easy-going, and friendly, making them ideal domestic animals. All rabbits in general herald the coming of springtime, courtship, and love. They are symbols of swiftness as well as good luck and peace. Rabbits also embody sexuality and fertility, hence the phrase "breeding like rabbits." Mheni is the Shona translation of "lightning."


	4. High and Dry

September wound into October, and Jacob and Laghu discovered something else unpleasant about their new environs besides the damned rain: Portland got really fucking cold. And it wasn't the dry cold that he was used to, it was a thick, muggy, humid cold that seeped into his lungs and tried to freeze him from the inside out every time he took a breath. Today was uncommonly cold, even for October, a snap chill, one of those days that cropped up once or twice in early fall before becoming true winter weather.

But with the cold, he found a benefit – unlike his hometown of Anais, Oklahoma, with its population of 2,187 souls, Portland actually had places that he could _go_ when he couldn't be home to face the gaping absence of his mama in the family dynamic, his sisters' sad, mourning doe eyes, and the inevitable fallout from his old man.

He went to the mall. One, because he actually knew how to get there without getting lost. Two, because it seemed the safest place to be. It wasn't the kind of place where trouble happened. Canned Muzak had to play somewhere, and if the mall didn't, then who else would play it?

The interior of the mall was as brightly lit as Heaven, and people milled about, drifting from store to store, shopping, browsing, chattering happily. On the lower level of the food court a fountain burbled and splashed, the musical sound of water rolling down squares of Art Deco concrete and sculpted, welded steel. The acoustics were well done so the inane yammering of patrons didn't become deafening yet weren't overlain with that thick, uncomfortable hush that was reserved usually for churches. Jacob stared into a cup of cheap coffee that he'd bought from one of the vendors with the change in his pockets; it was barely lukewarm and he hadn't so much as sipped it. He simply needed something to do with his hands. Laghu felt cool and still against the side of his neck, clinging to the inside of his jacket hood, only the faintest fluttering of a miniscule heart giving away the fact he still lived.

The cheap Styrofoam cup was a white circle with a brown ellipse of coffee inside it, a textured shape. He could draw it. His sketchpad was shoved in his bag along with a few charcoal pencils. Drawing sounded good, except he couldn't draw anything right now with his hands shaking the way they were, and his fingertips still numb. The dark liquid trembled as he touched the rim with two fingers. Canned Muzak filtered through the mall, vaguely familiar; he tried placing the tune, but it was impossible. Some pop anthem that'd been strangled by the gods of commerce.

His back felt like it was made of torn-up iron, his right side burned with a red sensation at each breath, and his left hand prickled from rug burn. Not to mention the headache that felt like a mule kicking him in the skull and the stinging, salty pain on the inside of his cheek where he'd bitten it. Jacob closed his eyes for a moment and forced a breath even though his ribs protested that decision loudly, chin dropped to his chest.

Laghu began humming softly in his ear, an old rhyme Mama would tell him when they went up the stairs at the old house. _One for sorrow, two for joy. Three for a girl, four for a boy. Five for silver, six for gold. Seven for a secret, never to be told. Eight for a wish, nine for a kiss. Ten for a step you always miss._

The childhood rhyme became the unmusical scraping of the crappy plastic chair opposite him being pulled back, metal feet dragging on the tiled floors, and someone dropping down into it to give him a smug grin. "Well, if it isn't Mad-Dog's favourite cowboy, skipping school. Somebody call the truancy police," Ezekiel Jones taunted in his thick Australian drawl, dressed in his usual designer chic, wearing that same shit-eating grin. His dark hair looked like he'd just come in from outside, windswept into a tangle that almost looked almost purposeful. His dæmon grinned at him too in traditional primate threat, springing onto the table and smoothing down its sleek, shining gold fur that gleamed in the stark lighting.

 _One for sorrow._ Jacob lifted his head to stare at the kid.

The grin spilled out of Ezekiel's face, a small crease appearing between his brows. "Holy hell, what happened to you?" he asked.

Jacob shuddered, the unconscious trembling of his muscles sending a fresh wave of ache through his frame. His eyes swiveled back down to the cup. Mad-Dog Morgan had a real hatred hard-on for him now, but since she could never give him a question he didn't already know the answer to, she vented it on the other students, and Ezekiel Jones – still couldn't believe he referred to himself in third person – was her favourite target. Which meant he and Jacob were definitely _not friends._ Which meant he didn't get to talk about this.

"Oi." Ezekiel leant forward in his chair, snapping slender brown fingers. "Cowboy. _Hey._ Sitting right here."

Laghu dug sharp little claws into his skin. He swallowed thickly, the thick lump of cotton wedged in his throat going down after a brief wrestling match, and he spoke in a voice that was hoarse and cracked but still his. "Fuck off."

The kid's eyebrows twitched upwards, but then he settled his small, skinny frame back in the chair, resting one ankle on the opposite knee. Like he had all the time in the world. "That's why you did a bunk, innit? So you wouldn't have to explain it to your girlfriend?" he asked.

"Cassie ain't my girlfriend," Jacob muttered, not even bothering to deny the first question. He _had_ skipped today because he didn't want to have to look her in the eye and lie about where the bruise on his face came from. By Monday, it would've faded enough for him to brush off without feeling too guilty.

Ezekiel actually had the nerve to roll his eyes. "Whatever you say. Is that why you're lurking here in the mall?" he asked.

"Fuck _off,"_ Jacob repeated with a little more force.

He just sat there. His dæmon sprang up to perch on one narrow shoulder, smoothing down Ezekiel's flyaway hair into some semblance of order with dexterous, hand-like paws, prehensile tail curled lightly around his neck. "That's a bit uncalled for, don't ya think?" the dæmon asked, and Jacob felt his own eyebrows lift in surprise. How many people in his school had same-sex dæmons? The odds should've been too small to calculate...but then again, they weren't exactly all from the same place. He was from Oklahoma, Cassandra said that she was born in New York, this kid was from goddamn _Australia,_ and Flynn might very well be from another planet entirely. Who knew? But still, it should've been an impossible coincidence. _Keep Portland Weird._ That slogan was starting to make a whole lot more sense inside his head. "C'mon, then, what's the big fuss all about?" Aur asked him, still smiling.

 _Kid, you don't want to know my problems, go away,_ Jacob thought, shaking off thoughts of dæmons in favour of staring at the tabletop. School must've let out because he was seeing a lot more teenagers now, and he even recognised one or two of them from his classes. He prayed that Cassandra wouldn't show up, but she definitely didn't strike him as the kind of girl to be hanging around the mall after school. Maybe. Hopefully. His back twinged.

A shriek of feminine laughter made him look up out of reflex. A few tables away, he saw one of the jocks from his civics class, a fair-haired guy with the kind of broad-shouldered build that was good for football, along with another boy that looked enough like him to either be his brother or his cousin. There were two girls with them, ones he didn't know, giggling behind their hands. The fair-haired jock put an arm around the nearest girl and picked her up. Her shirt rode up, exposing the supple curve of her back. She squealed in mock-indignation, kicking her legs as she laughed, the sound bright as new pennies spilling.

It was forty degrees out, his left hand was killing him, and this girl was dressed like a hooker and laughing. Normal goddamn teenagers in a mall. Jacob traced the ridge on the inside of his cheek where he'd bitten down with his tongue; his mouth tasted like old coffee and ash.

"Wait here a moment, yeah?" Ezekiel said, yanking his attention sharply away from the other kids. He pushed away from the table and loped off.

Once they were alone again, Jacob reached up and ran one fingertip down Laghu's back, feeling tiny lungs move, delicate bones beneath the silky fur; Laghu nibbled at his fingertips, sending the fizzle of anbaric pressure through his hands, the rug burn on his palm tingling.

He finally placed the song playing on the speakers. It was, of all things, an inoffensive rendition of "Highway to Hell." His mama had always loved the classics, and she'd always tune the truck into the oldies station. He wondered what she would think of one of her favourite AC/DC songs having its nuts chopped off and piped through the mall sound system. The thought made his stomach hurt, and the rest of him hurt a lot more, so he stopped thinking about it, though he couldn't quite ever get away from the memories of her; he kept bumping into it even when he tried to avoid it.

Jacob briefly considered just leaving, but he had finally found a position that didn't hurt his back or his ribs. It'd be too much trouble to get up, move, sit down, and start all over again. A moment later, Ezekiel was back, carrying a tray laden with food that smelled like hot grease and meat, and the opportunity was gone.

"So, cowboy. You gonna talk or just stare at me like an alien all day?" the kid asked, unwrapping a bacon cheeseburger.

"Why do you even fucking _care?"_ Jacob demanded abruptly. "And stop calling me that."

Ezekiel shrugged once as he completely smothered an order of curly fries in ketchup and mustard. "'Cause you're the first interesting person that I've met since I've been here, mate, even if you are occasionally a dick. And you're gonna have to give me something else to call you, then."

He blinked owlishly at the kid. "You don't know my name?" he asked; kid spent the past month picking at him and didn't even know his name?

"Nope."

"It's Jacob. And I'm not that interestin'."

Stabbing at the drenched fries with a fork, Ezekiel rolled his eyes again. "Yeah, sure you aren't. It's totally _normal_ for you to get in it with a teacher on your first day, get called into the Care-Bear of Doom's office, and then skip school to go skulk in the food court with a black eye," he replied, the sarcasm thick enough to cut through.

Laghu chortled softly in his ear, and Jacob wasn't sure if he wanted to kick him in the shins or laugh. "Right," he mumbled at last. He turned his head and caught a glimpse of himself in one of the glass windows, a ghost-reflection. The bruise on his face started just below his right eye and went catty-corner up to his temple, below his ear, and took up most of his cheek down to the jawline, ugly purplish-black shading into angry red around the edges. With his hood pulled up, the bruise could be mistaken for just a shadow at distance, but up close, it was inescapable. "Normal." Jacob looked back at the kid, deciding that Portland was definitely weird, and finally said, "We are _not_ friends."

Ezekiel snorted, attacking the curly fries again with the plastic fork. "Of course not. Ezekiel Jones does not have friends, especially not cowboys that don't know when to keep their yap shut."

He winced. "Don't refer to yourself in third-person. It's just...stupid."

Raising his eyebrows again, the kid replied, "And Ezekiel Jones doesn't _listen_ to cowboys that don't know when to keep their yap shut, either."

Jacob sighed.


	5. Birds of a Feather

"What happened to your face?" Cassandra asked the moment she got off the bus on Monday, just like he knew that she would. The bruise had faded over the weekend, so he was longer the colour of plum pudding, but now he'd started shading into those uglier shades of yellow, green, and brown, which always managed to linger longer than the actual bruise colour did.

He smiled, more out of relief seeing her than anything else. "Good morning to you, too," he replied as they filtered into the courtyards where kids sat and waited for first bell to ring.

She rolled her eyes. "Good morning. What'd you do to your face?"

There were a handful of park benches scattered around, and she sat down at the only empty one left. Jacob sat down opposite her, and as he opened his mouth to answer, a familiar drawling voice said, "Greetings, fellow classmates. Is this seat taken?" Ezekiel Jones tossed his backpack on the table and dropped onto the bench next to Cassandra, blatantly ignoring the death glare that Jacob was sending his way. Aur stretched out lazily on the table to warm himself in the morning sun, grinning up at Laghu.

Cassandra eyed up the foreign boy for a moment, confused as to why he was sitting there with them, but then she gave up on trying to figure it out. Turning her attention back to Jacob, she reached out and flicked his arm. "Hey. Still waiting for an answer."

Throwing Ezekiel one last filthy look, Jacob waved a hand. "Nothin', just bein' a klutz. Still not used to the new place, so I got up in the middle of the night, forgot where all the furniture was, tripped, and smacked myself a good one on the way down," he answered, and the lie only burned a little as it went down.

Ezekiel lifted both eyebrows at him, which Cassandra couldn't see. _Really,_ _that's the lie you're gonna go with?_ his expression said, and Jacob returned the look with a glare of his own: _Say something about it. I dare you._

After a long sceptical moment, Cassandra fixed him with a look that was half disbelief and half embarrassment. "That is almost as bad as walking into a door," she told him at last; he shrugged. "So is that why you weren't here on Friday?"

"Yeah. Gave me a roarin' headache and my old man said I could take the day." That one hurt a little more, and he looked down at the tabletop, picking at the weathered wood grain. Laghu crawled up the side of his neck into his hair, and the press of tiny claws and feet on his scalp tickled enough to distract him. He heard Ezekiel let out a little huff but the kid didn't say anything.

Jacob was almost grateful for that.

* * *

Things were starting to fall into a regular rhythm, something that he never thought he'd be grateful for but actually relished. No matter how unpredictable shit was at home, between his sisters' emotions swinging on an axis and his old man's temper going with how much he had to drink, he knew that he could come to school and still get bored out of his skull during civics and still endure fifty-six minutes of Mad-Dog Morgan being a bitch and still spend all of geometry class passing notes with Cassandra in the back row. The steady ache of losing Mama wasn't gone, and he doubted that it would ever really be gone entirely, but he was starting to get used to carrying that pain around with him.

Until today, of course. Jacob had taken a page out of Cassandra's book; instead of trying to poison himself to death with school food, he brought his own instead. Never anything much, just a sandwich and an apple or whatever was in the fridge that hadn't expired. They weren't allowed to eat in the library, so they sat in one of the small five-person tables that fringed the edges of the cafeteria. It was where the outcasts usually sat, the band geeks and techies and nerds in general, everyone that was ostracized from the three long banquet-like tables that took up most of the floor space.

Their usual 'spot' was in the far back of the cafeteria beneath the windows. Jacob dropped down into his chair, the one that let him sit with his back to the wall, and Cassandra sat down next to him. Mel loped over to lay beneath the table next to the girl's legs; Laghu fluttered from his shoulder to perch atop the hyena's head between her rounded ears.

Before he even got the chance to open his bag, though, Ezekiel had walked over and flopped down into another chair, though he didn't have a lunch tray or anything at all to eat. Jacob fixed the skinny little punk with a glare. "Are you stalking us or somethin'? What d'you want, man?" he snapped irately. He had a pretty good idea of why the smartass was following him around, but he didn't want anybody's pity. Especially not from this little twig.

Cassandra swatted his arm. "Jacob, be nice. He's not hurting anyone," she admonished.

Ezekiel waved a hand as if brushing away an annoying fly. "It's perfectly alright, Red. Cowboy's just jealous because Aur's prettier than he is," he said, and his dæmon made a show of sleeking down his gleaming golden fur, nose lifted imperiously.

"At least Laghu doesn't look like a decorative stuffed animal," Jacob tossed back.

"Well, maybe not, but you gotta admit, he's very small. And you know what they say about blokes with small dæmons," he said, waggling his eyebrows; Jacob took aim beneath the table, wondering if he could reach without kicking Cassandra by accident.

Suddenly Mel jumped up on an empty chair and placed one of her heavy paws on Aur's tail, trapping the little golden primate where he sat. "No, I've never heard. What exactly do they say?" she asked in a so-very-casual voice as she rested her heavy, bone-crushing jaws next to the tamarin, grinning with all her sharp, deadly teeth.

Ezekiel paled a shade or two, and Aur stuttered out, "Big things come in small packages. Of course."

Mel chuckled hoarsely and raised her paw; Aur scrambled back onto Ezekiel's shoulders and stayed there, gripping his shirt collar tightly. "Of course," she agreed, sprang down from the chair, and loped back over to rest her head on Cassandra's thigh, stub tail flicking. When Jacob caught the redhead's eye, she winked at him, and he stifled a laugh.

Suddenly he heard a series of raised voices, and he heard a familiar voice amongst them. Laghu dug claws into his scalp and muttered, "Aw, hell. Look." Jacob leant forward in his chair, craning his neck to see.

Three big guys had Flynn backed into the corner of the cafeteria, and the grasshopper boy had a look on his face akin to a deer in the high beams. He wasn't wearing his little office lanyard today, which meant that he was fair game. His dæmon fluttered around his head anxiously, trying to come to his aid, but anytime Koyi got close, a lean, mangy looking wildcat dæmon perched on one guy's shoulder swiped at the magpie's wings. Jacob didn't know any of the guys by name, but they had a well-nurtured reputation as mean as sin bruisers that'd sucker punch you soon as look at you. They'd have made good jocks if it weren't for the fact that they were also dumb as bricks and at least one of them smoked pot on a regular basis.

"Dammit," Jacob muttered. For a second, he almost thought about just leaving Flynn to fend for himself, but he already knew he couldn't. The kid was weird, but he was a good kid. "Watch my stuff for a second, Cassie," he said, then pushed back from the table before she could answer, rolling up his sleeves as he walked towards them. He flexed his hands, rolled his shoulders to loosen them, and relaxed his muscles. "Hey, Flynn!" he said, raising his voice.

All four heads swiveled towards him in almost-perfect sync, and the look of pathetic relief on Flynn's face was worth the ass-whupping Jacob was probably heading for. "H-hey, Jacob," the kid stuttered out.

"Somethin' wrong here, boys?" Jacob asked.

"Nothing you need to worry about, hillbilly," snapped the one with the wildcat dæmon. That one had to be the ringleader then, if he was talking first.

Jacob let himself smile, but it wasn't a pleasant expression. "I'm from Oklahoma, so I'd be a cowboy, not a hillbilly. You want a hillbilly, try Alabama."

Now he had their full attention. They turned to stare at him, and recognising an opportunity when he saw one, Flynn slipped away and bolted, not that they noticed. "Is that so?" wildcat-boy asked.

Jacob nodded, staring right back at them. There was a trick to bluffing guys like this, bullies that tried to cow other kids into submission by way of being bigger and taller. Dogs could smell fear, and they could also sense who was the alpha in a situation. You had to look at whatever or whoever was in your way and make the decision in your head that it wasn't no bigger than a pea and it wasn't gonna stop you. Jacob stared at the jackass and let him see that he wasn't backing off.

A hoarse, cackling laugh broke through the tense silence, and Jacob didn't need to turn his head to know that it was Mel. Cassandra came to stand beside his elbow. She looked so tiny compared to the other boys that it was comical, but the way Mel was giggling and baring her teeth took all the humour out of the situation. "Everything alright, Jacob?" she asked quietly.

"Just fine, darlin'. Just talkin' out some things with these fine fellows," he replied.

"Really? You mind if I cut into the conversation, then?" asked a new voice, and he turned his head to see Flynn returning with another girl. She was a tall, leggy blond with damn fine looks and a serious 'don't fuck with me' attitude to go with, back straight and chin lifted, like the only authority around here was hers. Her dæmon trotted along beside her, the dark, bristling bulk of a wild boar making a raw counterbalance to her pretty face and curvy figure.

"Not a bit," Jacob answered, looking back at the trio, who were suddenly looking a whole lot less sure of themselves. Even if they weren't the brightest bulbs in the socket, they could at least count high enough to know they were outnumbered.

Finally, the boy with the wildcat dæmon licked his lips and said, "We'll see you later, Carsen, when you don't got your girlfriend to hide behind."

Flynn blushed and sputtered something that vaguely sounded like 'not my girlfriend' as the trio skulked away, throwing glares that promised revenge later. Jacob watched them go, then turned towards the blond babe. "Glad you showed up. They're about as thick as brick shithouses, but they're bigger than me, too," he said, only half-joking. The bruise on his face might've looked better than it did Friday, but his ribs were still aching.

She tipped her head back with a laugh. "No problem. Thanks for saving the idiot," she answered, jerking a thumb over her shoulder at Flynn. "I gotta warn you, though. You've done something nice for him now, you're never gonna get rid of him. It's like feeding a stray puppy." She stepped forward and stuck out one hand, ignoring the way Flynn spluttered out something else incomprehensible, Koyi fluttering in indignant circles around his head. "Eve Baird."

"Jacob Stone." She shook hands like a man, her grip firm and direct, and he wondered if she was a military brat. Seemed like the type to him. He noticed then that Ezekiel was standing there with them, right next to Cassandra. "Jones, I'm almost impressed. Did you actually come over to help?" he asked dryly.

The Australian kid made a face of disgust. "Ugh, no way. Ezekiel Jones does not do punchy. I was just gonna wait until you morons got into it, then record it on my phone for posterity. And YouTube," he answered, patting his pocket and the iPhone-shaped outline in it.

Eve leant closer to him and muttered, "Did he just refer to himself in third-person?"

"Yup. Trust me, it doesn't grow on you," he muttered back, then raised his voice to say, "Try it, and I'll feed you that damn phone."

"You'd have to catch me first, cowboy."

As they walked back to their table, he nudged Cassandra lightly. "Thanks for that," he said. She couldn't have done much of anything in a fight against three boys that were all bigger than her, unless she was secretly a ninja or something he didn't know about. Mel might've done some damage to the other boys dæmons, but there wasn't much that Cassandra could've done directly. But that hadn't stopped her from coming over to help him.

She shrugged in a nonchalant sort of way, but there was a blush creeping up the sides of her neck.

They resumed their seats, but before Jacob even touched his lunch, Flynn had appeared at his other side, dropping into the vacant chair next to him. "Thank you for that, by the way. I mean, you didn't have to help me out, you don't even know me except for that one time I went to get you for Ms. Collins, but you came to help me anyways, and nobody else does that, except for Eve, so thanks, really," the boy said at high speed, never even seeming to pause in order to breathe, so it all came out sounding like one big long sentence; kid would make a killing as an auctioneer. All while he was talking, Koyi was bouncing from shoulder to shoulder, greenish-black feathers gleaming with metallic sheen under the fluorescent lighting.

"Uhm...you're welcome?" Jacob replied at last; Cassandra giggled into her hands, and Laghu fluttered over to nip at Mel's ear.

"Told you. Stray puppy," Eve sighed as she slid into the last empty chair at their table, propping her chin in one fist, elbow on the tabletop.

He tossed her a mock-exasperated look. "You couldn't have warned me about that beforehand? I'm still trying to get rid of the other stray that we've somehow picked up," he replied, jerking a thumb at Ezekiel, who immediately sat upright with an indignant expression.

"Oi! What are you talking about, cowboy? Nobody _gets rid_ of Ezekiel Jones! I'm _awesome_. People are begging for my attention, you ought to be bloody grateful that I'm even here talking to you lot!" he protested as Aur shook a small fist at him.

Cassandra broke down into helpless laughter, leaning against his side, and Mel giggled with her, though it wasn't near as creepy with her laughing, too.

Jacob found himself laughing with her, and for the first time since moving here, he didn't hurt one little bit.

* * *

Eve Baird – Paznic, European wild boar, _Sus scrofa scrofa._ Boars are one of the most adaptable mammals, having a range that spreads across many countries/environments. They live in female-dominated groups and have embodied traits like strength, power, courage, ferocity, and protection, which is why they were often used on warriors' heraldic shields to signify these characteristics. The Celts saw the boar as their most important sacred animal, a symbol of raw power that can be channeled under the power of the will. Paznic is the Romanian translation of "guardian."


	6. A Certain Slant of Light

That good feeling lasted the rest of the day, right up until he got home, unlocked the front door, and walked into the sight of his father passed out cold in his armchair, head lolling back on his neck with Geri sprawled across his feet like a furry dæmon rug. "Fuck," he murmured, seeing the bottle of Jim Beam sitting on the end table next to Isaac Stone's elbow, right next to a glass that had only a few amber drops clinging to the bottom. He took off his boots and set down his bag before carefully picking his way across the living room. The newspaper and mail had been dropped on the floor, scattered when the man had drunkenly knocked into the coffee table and capsized it, not to mention knocked a picture askew staggering against the wall.

"Pop. Hey, Pop. C'mon," Jacob murmured quietly, shaking his old man's shoulder with one hand; his sisters would be home soon, and he didn't want them to see their father in this state.

Isaac only growled something incomprehensible, more asleep than awake, and Geri growled with him, her paws twitching.

Sighing, Jacob leant down, pulled one of Isaac's arms over his shoulders, and hauled the man to his feet. "C'mon, Pop, let's get ya to bed before the girls get home," he muttered, staggering a little under the other man's almost dead weight. Laghu attached himself to one of Geri's ears and began urging the other dæmon to her feet, coaxing her to get up and follow as Jacob dragged Isaac down the hallway to his bedroom.

"R'becca?" Isaac slurred as Geri bumped into the walls and nearly tripped over the hallway rug.

Jacob swallowed hard, blinking back the hot tears that rose behind his eyes. "Just me, Pop. Mama ain't here," he replied hoarsely. He used one foot to push open the door of the master bedroom and pulled Isaac into the room, letting him down none-too-gently on the bed, not that he was sober enough to notice. Geri flopped down on the floor next to the bed and in an instant was snoring. Laghu fluttered back up to latch on Jacob's sleeve as he knelt down and pulled off Isaac's boots; his mother would've killed him for wearing his boots in the house. He left a glass of water and Advil on the bedside table.

Shutting the bedroom door quietly, Jacob leaned against the doorframe a moment, forcing himself to take a deep breath that shuddered in his lungs, then let it out slowly, taking another, then another, until he wasn't trembling anymore.

He had another twenty minutes before his sisters got home; the elementary and middle schools weren't as close to their house as the high school was, and even if they were, Jacob wouldn't hear anything of his sisters walking by themselves. They weren't in Anais anymore, where everybody knew everybody and the only real trouble came from teenagers that trespassed on private properties to have bonfires and party.

After he'd put away the booze and cleaned up the living room, Jacob scoured the cupboards for something to make for dinner. There wasn't much; he'd have to talk Pop into giving him the billfold so he could go shopping soon. Eventually, he settled on spaghetti. All they had was that Ragu stuff for sauce, which he considered cheating, but there wasn't anything else to use.

He'd just dropped the dry pasta into the boiling pot when the hiss of air-pumped brakes let him know the school bus had arrived. He heard the front door swing open, then shut again, three pairs of feet clattering into the front hall and into the kitchen, greeting him in piping voices, "Hey, Jake!"

Smiling, he turned to face his sisters. "One, two, and three annoying little sisters all present and accounted for," he teased, to which he got three stuck-out tongues in reply.

There was no mistaking the four of them for anything but siblings. Jacob and all of his sisters had the same dark hair (Rachel had a curl to hers), same fair skin, and same blue eyes, except for Dinah; her eyes were more green than blue, like Nana's had been. Each of them were born almost exactly three years apart, and none of his sisters' dæmons had settled yet. It wasn't uncommon for their family – Laghu hadn't settled until Jacob was nearly fifteen. They were late-bloomers in terms of puberty and late-settlers in terms of dæmons.

"What's for dinner?" Leah asked, coming over to pull on his elbow as Rachel and Dinah switched on the TV in the living room; her dæmon, Daya, became an ermine and curled around her throat like a furry necklace. She was the oldest sister at twelve, but looking at her, she could easily be mistaken for ten or younger, given that she was still quite short and stick-straight, something that he was grateful for. He didn't want to deal with the idea of boys taking interest in any of his sisters for a while; he had enough problems for the time being.

"Spaghetti," Jacob answered as he prodded the noodles to keep them from sticking together. "And it's your night to do the dishes."

"Aw, _Jake…."_

He waggled the fork at her reprovingly. "Nope. And you're gonna get your homework done too before you watch TV."

Leah scowled up at him and planted both fists on her still-narrow hips. "Hey, you cain't tell me what to do, you ain't – " She choked off sharply, lip trembling as her eyes welled.

Jacob set down the fork, head bowed. "I know," he murmured hoarsely. "I know I ain't. But Pop's…" He choked on the words. They didn't know how bad Isaac drank, didn't know how foul the old man's temper got once he was three sheets in the wind, and he damn sure wasn't about to tell them. Mama was gone, they needed to at least think that their father was still around. "I'm tryin'," he settled on at last.

Sniffling, she stepped forward and buried her head against his chest, arms wrapped tight around his waist, and Jacob hugged her just as tight. Laghu fluttered down to gently comb his fangs through Daya's fur. "I miss Mama, Jake," Leah whispered, muffled in his chest. "I want Mama back."

"I know. I know. I do, too," Jacob murmured, stroking her hair with one hand. "But there ain't nothing we can do about it. We just gotta…" He swallowed past the cotton that was burring in his throat. "We're gonna get through it. Alright? We're gonna be okay, li'l bit," he said, using his old nickname for her.

"Are we?" she asked in a tiny voice.

"Damn straight. Here, look at me." Leah tipped her chin up, and he used the edge of his sleeve to dry her eyes. "None of that now. You don't wanna upset Rachel and Dinah, do you?" he asked; she shook her head, still sniffling. "Atta girl. Don't worry. We're gonna be okay. Promise. Will you set the table for me, please?"

She nodded slowly, then let go of him and went to take down plates, having to stand on her toes to reach the cupboard. Daya fluttered around her head as a shrike. "Where's Pop?" she asked as she opened the silverware drawer.

"Sleepin'," he replied as he picked up the fork and resumed separating the noodles, fishing one out to test. "So try to keep it down, he had a long day at work." Switching off the stove, he dumped the pasta into the strainer he had set in the sink. "Go get Rachel and Dinah, tell 'em to go wash their hands and come sit down to eat."

Leah set down the silverware on the table, then came over to hug him around the waist again, leaning her head against his back. "You're a good brother, Jake. The best," she mumbled into his shirt.

"Thanks, li'l bit. I'm tryin'," he repeated, patting her hands where they were laced together over his stomach.

She let him go and went to the living room, telling Rachel and Dinah to stay quiet because Pop was asleep before traipsing to the bathroom to wash their hands.

Jacob let out a slow breath and fixed five plates, four of which went on the table; the fifth one he covered with Saran wrap and put in the fridge for Isaac, once his old man slept it off enough to actually eat something solid.

Dinah and Rachel talked all through supper, chattering about the friends they were making and how they missed Anais but it was still kinda nice here, too, even if it did rain a lot and the bus smelled like feet. Leah didn't say much of anything, and he reminded her in a quiet voice that she actually had to _eat_ her spaghetti instead of just poking at it with her fork.

Once they were done, he cleared the table, ran dishwater in the sink, and left the dishes to soak, watching the girls do their homework. He answered three math problems for Rachel, corrected Dinah's spelling on two vocabulary words, and proofread a one-page book report for Leah. The younger two were set free to watch TV once they were done, on the agreement that they keep the volume down so they didn't wake up Pop. Jacob stood next to Leah, rinsing the soapy water off the dishes as she washed them, setting them in the rubber rack to dry; after they were done, she was set free, too.

He sat down at the empty table to finish his own homework once his sisters agreed on a movie to watch and were all sitting quietly in the living room. Laghu fluttered in circles around the kitchen, stretching his wings as Jacob puzzled through the mysteries of damn geometry, wishing that he had thought to ask Cassandra for her phone number so he could ask her about this crap. The girl was a genius with numbers, she probably had geometry down the way he had history.

He had moved from geometry to chemistry when he heard the master bedroom door slam shut, heavy footsteps shuffling downstairs. Laghu squeaked and dive-bombed into Jacob's pocket just as Isaac staggered into the kitchen, bleary-eyed and weaving slightly on his feet. Geri slouched at his heels, eyes just as bloodshot and tired.

Jacob didn't say anything. Never speak until spoken to.

Isaac crossed the kitchen and began to pull open the cupboards. "Where's the damn whiskey?" he growled in a voice made hoarse from years of shouting orders on an oilrig and being in smoky-aired bars.

"Above the stove, Pop," Jacob replied softly, gripping the pencil so tightly that the thin wood creaked in his fingers. Used to be they kept it on a shelf in Mama's glass-doored curio cabinet, but that was gone, just like all the rest of her stuff. Now he put it in whatever cupboard the girls weren't tall enough to reach and wouldn't go snooping in. Only once had Jacob gotten up the nerve to pour the booze down the sink; the resulting bruises hadn't been pretty to look at, and he couldn't sleep on his back for two weeks.

Isaac took down a new bottle of Jim Beam, banging the cupboard shut noisily; Jacob winced, hoping that his sisters wouldn't come into the kitchen wondering what all the noise was about. As he went to get a glass out of the cupboard, he tripped on Geri, who'd lain down in front of the sink, and caught himself on the counter, nearly knocking the dishrack over onto him, still full of drying dishes, including the long, curved carving knife Jacob had used to cut vegetables for supper two nights ago.

"Pop, here, lemme – " He stood up, grasping the man lightly by the arm, only to have Isaac yank his arm back and give him a hard, violent shove backwards. Jacob fell back in his chair so hard it tipped on two legs for a second, and he had to grip the edge of the table to keep from falling.

"Don't…fucking touch me," Isaac growled in a low voice, muttering under his breath as he took a glass out of the dishrack instead.

"Yessir," Jacob whispered. The old man had clipped him one in the mouth when he'd pulled back so quickly, more on accident than anything, but it still throbbed with discomfort.

His father twisted off the cap and filled the glass, downing half of it in one go. Bloodshot eyes – a colder shade of blue than any of his children's – looked around the kitchen in a bleary sort of confusion, as if remembering where he was for the first time, that this wasn't the ranch house in Anais, it was their new house in Portland. His gaze drifted across the kitchen table, saw the notebooks and schoolwork. "Finish yer homework," he grumbled.

"Yessir," Jacob repeated as Isaac refilled the glass before shuffling out of the kitchen with Geri loping along next to him. The door of the master bedroom clicked shut. He reached up and touched the corner of his mouth where the old man had clipped him; it wasn't bleeding but ached nonetheless. He could taste wax oranges and salt.

* * *

Jacob sent his sisters to bed at nine on the dot, to the tune of much protesting. Isaac was out cold again, so he had the house to himself for the time being. After he put away the rest of the dishes in the drying rack, he took down a glass and spiked his Coke with some of Pop's Jim Beam. Laghu hissed as he did it, but he ignored the soft sound of protest. Mama would've made him scrub the kitchen top to bottom with his _teeth_ if she was alive to catch him. She'd have given him a Lecture – probably the one about Responsible Choices and Adulthood and how he wasn't anywhere close to either. But she wasn't here. Isaac was, and given that the bottle had been completely full this morning but was now barely a fifth, he didn't think the old man ever even twigged, and if he did, he probably wouldn't care.

Wrapping Mama's sunrise quilt around his shoulders, he curled up on the couch, snug as a bug in a rug, and took out his sketchpad, bracing it against his knees. Giving up on arguing about the Beam, Laghu crawled down into the hollow of his collarbone, snuggled down into his skin. He began sketching a Byzantine architecture building, using shortcuts he had picked up over the years, holding the cool glass against the still-aching side of his mouth with his free hand.

"We need t' go shopping this weekend," Laghu reminded him drowsily.

"I know. I'll remind Pop in the mornin'," he answered, taking another drink. He'd mixed it about half-and-half, so it felt like his taste buds were burning off a little. In the morning, Isaac wouldn't be awake enough remember what he'd done tonight, and he'd be too hungover to argue about handing over the billfold. Jacob was getting the hang of catching him between blackouts.

"An' don' forget about Dinah's field trip."

"I ain't gonna forget." He'd already forged Isaac's signature on the permission slip, and he'd be sure to give her a dollar so she could buy herself something from the gift shop on the trip. Dinah was a collector, she liked having shiny little baubles to remember things by.

Laghu fell silent, more asleep than awake, and his dæmon's drowsiness in conjunction with the Beam made everything get a warm glow after a while. Setting aside the sketchpad, Jacob got up to fix himself another drink, kept Mama's quilt wrapped tight around him, and shuffled up to his room to lie on the bed and stare at the light slanting across his ceiling. It had started raining again – shocker – and the water streaming down the window panes added new depth to the play of shadows and dim light, rivulets breaking up in patterns. Every room was different, and the way that outside light reflected up onto the popcorn spackle stuff on nearly every ceiling was unique. It didn't get dark here like it did in Anais, where the only real streetlights were in the heart of town, and out on ranch houses like theirs, when it got dark, it got _dark,_ a deep blackness that seemed to breathe, it was so thick and tangible. If there was a new moon, or if the sky was overcast, then there wasn't a spot of light to be found. Here, the whole damn city was full of lights, and the soft glow of the streetlamp outside shone through his bedroom window and it would keep him awake until he closed the curtains.

But right now he just stared up at the play of light over his ceiling.

* * *

Isaac Stone – Geri, bullmastiff, _Canis lupus familiaris._ Bullmastiffs are independent, quiet working dogs bred for strength, size, and speed by gamekeepers to ward off poachers and protect estates, but also for blood sports like bear-baiting, bull-baiting, and dog-fighting. Dogs have long since been symbols of fidelity, companionship, and protection. They are considered less savage than their wolf ancestors but still ferocious protectors; the highest honour to pay to a hunter was to compare him to his dog. Geri is the name of one of Odin's wolves in Norse mythology, whose name means "the greedy one."

Leah Stone – Daya, as of yet unsettled. Daya is the Hindi translation for "gentle."

Rachel Stone – Mahaan, as of yet unsettled. Mahaan is the Hindi translation for "noble."

Dinah Stone – Aadar, as of yet unsettled. Adar is the Hindi translation for "honor."


	7. One Foot Wrong

It took poking, prodding, and downright bribery, but he convinced Cassandra _and_ Flynn to actually accompany him to the mall on Thursday after leaving school. Eve had a meeting with the ROTC or she'd have come with too, and Ezekiel had said something about a hot date with the Italian foreign exchange student. Jacob highly suspected the latter to be utter bullshit, but hey, the kid could dream if he wanted.

"See, it ain't so bad out here, is it? You didn't burn up on the consecrated grounds of commerce," he said as they sat down at one of the tables in the food court. Usually, he would have already been home, but he knew that Isaac had a meeting in the morning, which meant the old man would stay sober enough for the night. It felt nice to actually be out with his friends, acting like a normal damn kid for once.

They'd gone to both of the mall's bookstores, and Cassandra was happily clinging to a shiny new textbook on advanced particle physics that wasn't even taught in college. Shit like that made his head hurt, but she lapped it up like it was the newest teenage romance novel. Bully for her. Flynn had two books, currently shoved in his ever-present satchel. One was a comprehensive guide to symbolism in various religions and cultures around the world; the second was some kind of history on the American military. Jacob had a creeping suspicion that had more to do with interest in a certain leggy blond than interest in the actual military, but he wasn't going to call the kid on it.

They were going to see a movie – he'd never actually been to a mall with an indoor theatre before – but they had another thirty minutes to kill until then. Which meant he had to make good on his bribery. For Cassandra, that meant frozen yogurt, and Flynn, one of those giant soft-serve pretzels that were usually sold at baseball games.

As Flynn and Cassandra talked numbers over some point in her book, Jacob made out a rough draft of an academic criticism he wanted to write on colonial architecture. Which generally meant a lot of scratching out and a lot of writing in the margins, in a beat-up old wide-margin notebook he kept specifically for that purpose. Laghu perched on his sleeve and pointed out another split infinitive; he never needed spell-check with his dæmon around. As he scratched out the offending error, a slender brown arm suddenly reached over his shoulder and yanked the notebook right out of his lap. "Hey!"

"Well, well, what have we here? A whole pack of nerds, out of their little holes for once. I ought to take a photo, send it to NatGeo," the owner of the arm cooed at him in a voice like raw sugar cane.

Lamia Aberforth was beautiful in the way a tiger was, graceful and elegant but deadly all the same, able to snatch your head clean off your shoulders before you knew it was gone. She was of South African descent, with smooth skin the colour of good coffee with cream and curly dark hair she kept only about shoulder-length, built all of curves the way actresses were back in the '50s, and she dressed to emphasize it. Today, it was dark jeans that looked painted onto her curvy legs and it was a damn good paint job, a black leather belt studded with metal spikes wrapping twice around her waist, matching the straps on each wrist. A black velvet corset with silver ribbing and lace trim hugged every curve of her body, with a shorn black silk jacket to match, and knee-high leather boots added about three inches to her frame. Her dæmon tended to drape himself around her shoulders and neck like a great piece of scaly jewelry, a snake nearly six feet long and dark olive greenish-black.

Nobody ever really wanted to fuck around with her, because not only could she hold a grudge like nobody's business, but she was also a black belt in Judo and had several trophies for skeet shooting and archery. She ran track at school, and it showed in her long, toned legs. She was also a conniving bitch that Jacob could very easily see being the future executive of some big, fancy-ass company that appealed to her high maintenance ways.

"Give it back, Lamia," he said, pushing to his feet and turning to face her. "That ain't yours to be reading."

"Why, what is it? A love letter to your little girlfriend?" asked Lamia snidely, taking a step back and waggling the notebook up in the air dauntingly, like a treat she was trying to entice him with; Cassandra winced slightly, gripping her textbook to her chest like a shield. Lamia's dæmon hissed out a dry rasping laugh like the skitter of dead leaves over the sidewalk, curling in loops around her neck like a bib necklace. She turned over the notebook and raised her voice to be heard. "Let's see. _'Huguenots in the Hudson Valley: How a Generation of Calvinists Defined a Century-Long Tradition of Architecture.'"_ She let out a derisive laugh, stepping back again as he took a step towards her. "What the hell is this shit? Oh, my God, you're one of _them,_ aren't you? One of those brainiac freaks?" she asked, making a gesture towards Cassandra and Flynn, who were still sitting at the table, looking uncertain and anxious at the same time. Mel was bristling under the table, and Koyi was hopping from shoulder to shoulder in nervous agitation.

"Give it back," Jacob growled again; he hadn't missed the way they both flinched at the word 'freak.' It incensed him something fierce, seeing the way she so casually dismissed his friends.

She took another step back, holding the notebook behind her. "Or what? You gonna hit me, hick?"

Other people were starting to take notice now, kids from school pausing to watch, one or two of them holding their phones. "No," he answered. Even if she was a tedious little termagant who deserved to be taken down a notch or two, he'd never hit a girl.

Lamia smirked.

Jacob lunged forwards, bringing his hands together with a sharp _crack_ right in front of her nose just as Laghu flew at her dæmon's face in a flurry of wildly beating wings and angry hissing. Startled, she leapt back out of instinct, only to have her legs meet the edge of the fountain that she'd backed up against without realising it. Lamia let out a shriek as she lost balance and fell on her ass in the fountain with a tremendous splash. He snatched up his notebook, tucking it under one arm. She'd dropped it on the floor, so it hadn't gotten wet, thankfully. "I'm just gonna do that," he replied. "By the way, for an athlete, your situational awareness is for shit. And I'm from Oklahoma. Cowboy, not a hick."

"You fucking _prick!"_ Lamia shrieked.

"That actually rhymed," he mused, walking away from her.

"You're dead meat, you fucking bumpkin! Dead meat!" she shrilled after him. She tried to scramble up out of the fountain to follow him, lost her footing, and fell back with another splash, cursing a violent blue streak all the while. When she finally did manage to clamber out of the fountain, she slipped on the slick wet floor and landed on her ass…just in time for mall security to come over and inform her that swimming in the fountains was _not_ acceptable.

"Marry me," Cassandra said as he rejoined her and Flynn, and he laughed, throwing an arm around her shoulders.

He didn't notice that Flynn had gone very quiet and very pale.

* * *

When Jacob went to join the others at their table at lunch on Friday, Ezekiel stood up and made a show of bowing at the waist, pulling out the chair for him. "All hail to King Cowboy, his royal badassness, defeater of most heinous wenches and champion of freaks and geeks everywhere," he announced in a grand tone, and Aur mimicked the bow as well, earning a round of laughter from the others.

"You're an idiot. Sit down," he muttered, lightly cuffing the kid on the ear as he sat down.

Eve reached over and punched him in the arm. "Hey, you've got some serious stones, pardon the pun, to pull that kind of crap with Lamia. In front of everyone, too," she informed him with admiration in her voice. "I almost wish I had come with just to see it."

Jacob shrugged, looking down at the table so they wouldn't be able to see him blushing; Laghu, on the other hand, was preening smugly under the praise. "She was askin' for it, and it wasn't my fault she decided to stand right in front of the fountain."

"You know she's out to kill you now," Flynn warned in an entirely too-solemn voice. "Seriously. She's messed people up, Jacob. Bad."

Eve threw an arm around his shoulders and roughed his hair in her usual rough-housing affection. Jacob was convinced that she was a military brat and had no sisters, the way she acted. "C'mon, Carsen, don't be so serious. She's one girl, not a knife gang."

Flynn shook his head stubbornly, Koyi winging in anxious circles around the table over their heads. "You guys haven't been going here for as long as I have. Lamia's got some serious issues. In eighth grade, her boyfriend cheated on her, and two weeks later, he 'fell' down a flight of stairs, broke his arm and collarbone. And a week after _that,_ the girl that he cheated with found a dead bird in her locker. Last year, Amy Meyer made captain of the track team when Lamia had been trying out for it, and a month later, she ended up 'tripping' and twisting her ankle so bad it put her out the rest of the season."

"Okay, mate, you're starting to sound a little paranoid even to _me,_ " Ezekiel said.

"There's no way she could do all that stuff and not get caught," Cassandra added, stroking Mel's ears.

Jacob reached out and clapped him on the shoulder, nearly dislodging Koyi without meaning to. "Thanks for the concern, bud, but they're right. She's just a nasty bitch that likes to talk a big game."

Flynn only shook his head but didn't say anything else.

* * *

He truly didn't believe Flynn about Lamia. Not because she was a girl and was somehow incapable of being that twisted, but because Cassandra was right – there was no way that she could be that twisted and _not_ get caught, especially in a school with a rumour mill of frightening proportions, not to mention social media. Someone would've caught her doing it, someone would've got it on their phone, told their friend, whatever, and it would be all over the damn place in twenty minutes.

He didn't believe it…until he got to school on Monday to find nearly everybody already inside, clustered in the hallway around the lockers. Wondering what in the hell was going on, he followed the crowd inside.

Jacob could smell it before he could even it – something rotted, meat. It was hard to describe but distinctive as all hell. Unbearably sweet and yet bitter enough to gag at the same time; he knew it from driving past fresh roadkill on the Oklahoma blacktop, from the dogs bringing them a 'gift' up to the front porch in summer. There was a crowd of people around his locker, everyone whispering and murmuring in hushed, nervous voices; he could feel the eyes boring into him as he made his way up the hall, with Cassandra tagging along closely at his heels. The other kids parted for him like the Red Sea, as if they were afraid to catch something he had. The scent got stronger.

The dented metal door had nearly been smashed off its hinges, bent inwards on itself until it was almost folded in two. The padlock lay in pieces on the floor but that wasn't what had everyone looking pale and sick. It was the fact that the locker had been stuffed to overflowing with raw hamburger meat. It already gone purple-rancid, swarming with flies and maggots, and the _smell_ was unbelievable. And there was an animal in there, too, a bloated black rat that'd been hung by a wire noose. It definitely wasn't fresh, which meant that whoever had done it had probably broken in on Friday and left it there all weekend rotting.

Jacob took too deep a breath, and the smell went down strong, coating his tongue and the back of his throat until he couldn't stand the idea of swallowing but didn't know what else to do. He swallowed hard, and the sweet, sweet smell went down, and his breakfast inched up.

 _Meat. Dead meat,_ he realised abruptly and snapped his gaze around to scan the crowd. Everyone seemed more interested in staring at the gruesome spectacle in the locker than anything, but amidst the milling bodies, he spotted Lamia, and she wasn't staring at the dead rat. She was staring at _him,_ a malicious glitter in her dark eyes as she ran one black-varnished fingernail along her dæmon's head. Her lips curled up, but it damn sure wasn't a smile. More like a leopard showing its fangs just before it went for the jugular.

Mad-Dog Morgan suddenly looked like Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm.

Someone must have finally gone to get a teacher, because there were adult voices telling them to move and get to their classes and clear the hallway. Jacob heard them only vaguely, still staring at Lamia, tasting his own pulse on his tongue.

A hand landed on his shoulder, he startled, and the trance was broken.

He looked for Lamia, but she was already gone, vanished in the crowd. Jacob looked up into the face of the principal, Lance Dulaque. He was a tall, older man that'd gone largely bald, and what hair that remained was steely-grey mixed with the odd white strand. He had a hard, angular face, cold eyes, and an almost permanent sneer embedded in his features.

"My office. Now."

* * *

Lamia Aberforth – Murwi, black mamba, _Dendroaspis polylepis_. Snakes in general are most often portrayed as a symbol of evil (i.e. the Serpent in the Garden of Eden) but they also symbolise healing, wisdom, and reincarnation. They are emblems of female power, held in the hands of priestesses on Knossos as a symbol of power; the goddess Medusa had snakes for hair, symbolising her immortality, wisdom, and sacredness, and only once the energy shifted from maternal to paternal did she become the Gorgon, a symbol of dread. Murwi is the Shona translation of "fighter."


	8. Poisoned Blood

Whilst Ms. Collins' office had been made to look as bland and neutral as possible, Dulaque's office looked like it belonged to the CEO of a huge company, all sleek, dark, hard lines and sharp corners, everything painfully organised and neat. Jacob felt inadequate simply standing there. The man sat down behind his desk, steepling his long, pale fingers in front of him; there was low, padded bench beside his desk for his dæmon to sit on and have a full view of the room. She was a coyote whose fur had gone steely-grey, echoing the colour of his hair. Her eyes were just as hard and cold as Dulaque's, and she fixed them on Jacob, propriety be damned.

"Sit," Dulaque ordered.

He dropped down into the chair. It looked luxurious, but it was rigid and stiff, forcing him to sit with his back straight. Laghu crawled beneath his shirt collar to press into the hollow of his collarbone, lightly scratching tiny teeth over his skin comfortingly. "Sir, if I could just – "

"Quiet."

The older man stared at him hard and long for several moments, the silence almost deafeningly loud. Jacob wanted to squirm, but he forced himself to be still, hold his tongue. Finally, Dulaque sat back in his chair, lacing his fingers together. "Mr. Stone, if there is one thing that I cannot tolerate, it is childish behaviour, especially coming from the young adults that you are _supposed_ to be acting like. And this behaviour goes above and beyond juvenile. Breaking and entering, destruction of school property, not to mention an utter lack of respect for your fellow peers and teachers, to say the very least. I don't know how things went back in your former school, but a publicity stunt like this is not going to win you any kind of favour here."

"Wait, _what?"_ Jacob couldn't honestly believe his ears. "You think that _I_ – _?"_

"I will not tolerate any such juvenile trick from you again, Mr. Stone. This is the first and only warning you will receive. As I doubt your family has the...means to pay off what damages have been done, you'll be serving detention, Tuesdays and Thursdays after school, for the next two weeks."

He pushed to his feet, too incensed to stay sitting down for another hot second. "Are you fucking kidding me? It was _Lamia,_ Lamia Aberforth, she's the one who did it, she's – "

"Sit _down,"_ Dulaque hissed out in a voice like frozen glass, and stiff-legged, Jacob forced himself to sink back into the chair. "And I will remind you _once_ to mind both your tone and your words in my office. As for Ms. Aberforth...that is a very serious accusation to make, and as you are new here, I shall inform you that in her three-years at Roosevelt, Ms. Aberforth has never been anything other than an exemplary student, and her parents have been very generous in making donations towards the modernization of this school. To have me believe that she would ever do something so crass is beyond foolish. Now get to class."

* * *

"So what happened? Did you tell Dulaque about Lamia?" Ezekiel asked, standing with his hands shoved in his pockets. Aur had huddled down in his coat against the nipping wind, and he'd pulled his hood up, too. He had been surprisingly solemn, and Jacob was wondering how long their good fortune was going to last. Ezekiel Jones was the kind of guy that would make a joke on the way to Hell, even if it meant extra time and worse punishment. But then again, if an act of aggressive-ass vandalism with a dead rat shoved in a locker wasn't enough to make someone sober up, weren't much that would do it.

They were sitting outside, about thirty yards from the school, cutting their last class but not really caring about it; there was a steep hill that had a set of concrete steps leading down, and at the bottom was the practice field for soccer and lacrosse. Acacia bushes sprouted all over the hill, already clad in their vibrant autumn coats. Jacob had picked up a suitably thick tree branch and was using it like a baseball bat, picking up larger rocks and hitting them into the small copse of trees that lined both ends of the practice field. He needed desperately to hit something, and each stone he sent winging into the trees, he liked to imagine it was Dulaque's head. Or Lamia's.

"He didn't believe me," Jacob snapped. "Old bastard thinks that _I_ did it."

"What?" Eve gasped incredulously; Paznic snorted and pawed at the earth with small, sharp hooves. "But…literally _everybody_ knows that she did it, how – ?"

"Yeah, well, apparently, _Ms. Aberforth_ has been nothing but an _exemplary_ student, and her _parents_ have been oh-so-very _generous_ making _donations_ towards the _modernization_ of the school," he replied in a voice dripping venomous sarcasm as he recited Dulaque's words. He picked up another rock, tossed it in the air, and swung the branch; the rock went zinging into the trees, colliding with one with a loud _thwack!_ that echoed in the cool air. "The fucker gave me goddamn detention, said that he wasn't gonna 'tolerate' another stunt like this from me. Well, he can take that detention and shove it right up his – " Snarling angrily, he flung the branch down the hill as hard as he could, wishing he could do the same thing with Dulaque _and_ Lamia both. It clattered through the bushes and startled a pair of birds from their roost.

Ezekiel shook his head. "Bitch used Mummy and Daddy to buy herself a get-out-of-jail-free card," he said as if the very notion offended him.

Flynn was sitting on the top step of the concrete steps that zigzagged down the steep hill; for once Koyi wasn't hopping around like a grasshopper on crack or flying in vibrant circles around their heads. Koyi was perched on Flynn's arm and was snuggling into his chest, the boy stroking his feathers. Flynn hadn't said _'I told you so'_ yet, and Jacob really hoped he wouldn't, because then he might actually have to hit the kid. He really, really would.

"Are you going to go?" Cassandra asked in a small voice, sitting on the grass with an arm draped around Mel.

Jacob nodded as he picked up another stone and tossed it down the hill. "Kinda have to, I guess," he growled, then kicked at the dirt. "Fuck!"

"I thought that hicks didn't use such language in front of women," drawled Lamia's honey-sweet voice as she walked over to them, her dæmon curled in loops around her shoulders for warmth, black tongue flickering in and out at regular intervals to taste the air. She had a walk that was half glide, half sex on the hoof, the ultimate hooker's walk. As she came up close, she affected an exaggerated, mocking Southern drawl, "Might offend a lady's delicate sensibilities, ya see." Today she wore a crimson silk blouse tucked into a pleated skirt short enough to flash the tops of her thigh-highs and garters when she walked, and studded ankle boots. With the blouse tucked in and the way things jiggled, she wasn't wearing a bra. And it was definitely cold enough for it to be obvious. "So…how'd your little visit to Principal Dulaque's office go, hick?" she asked, this time in her own voice.

"We know that you fucking did it," Jacob snarled, feeling Laghu shaking with anger against the side of his neck. No doubt she knew perfectly damn well how his visit with Dulaque had went, it was written on her a yard high in smugness that he could almost _smell._

She smiled with all her pearly white teeth, and he again saw the leopard lurking in the expression. "Sure…but can you _prove_ it? Hmm?"

Abruptly, Cassandra stood up and turned to face Lamia. They were almost the same height, even if the latter's boots gave her an extra inch or two, but the differences between them were so stark. Cassandra, full of righteous indignation, protective and angry; Lamia, full of self-satisfaction, smug and egotistic. _"We_ all know you did it, too, and he can't ignore all five of us," the redhead snapped. Mel bristled and giggled, but it was that high, cackling, eerie laughter that made people shiver, showing all her sharp teeth; she was eyeing Lamia's throat with a certain lusty eagerness.

Lamia raised one perfectly shaped eyebrow. "Is that right? Well, let's do the math here." She pointed to Jacob. "One hick from the bum-fuck backwoods that Ms. Fey already has 'concerns' about." Her lacquered fingernail drifted to Ezekiel next. "One smartass, pickpocketing foster kid with a crackhead mother and no father." She drifted to Eve, who was almost vibrating with anger, Paznic snorting and pawing at the ground in eagerness to charge. "One new girl that hasn't even been here three months and doesn't know shit about how things work around here." She went to Flynn, hunched over as small as he could as if to physically avoid her words. "One ADHD freak so fucking scatterbrained the teachers gave up and just made him a messenger boy instead of dealing with him." Finally, her pointing finger came back to Cassandra, less than an inch from the girl's nose. "And one sad, pathetic little reject that nobody believes and nobody likes, whose parents dumped her because they didn't want her, either."

Cassandra's pale cheeks diffused with colour, flags of red standing out against her complexion, and Mel let out a sharp barking snarl.

Lamia turned her hand to point at herself. "Against _me,_ who has been going here all of my life and who's probably going to have her last name on one of those buildings when they're finished," she added, pointing to the school, where the theatre building was still under construction. "Hm. Somehow, I don't think that those numbers are working for you this time, math-freak. So why don't you stay on your little island of misfit toys, and we can mark all this down to an experience?"

Unblinking, Cassandra lifted her chin and stared at the dark girl. "I'm not afraid of you, Lamia Aberforth. You're a bully and a coward, and I don't care how rich your parents are. You don't scare me," she replied, her voice admirably level, back straight and shoulders set.

Lamia took a half-step forward so she was right in the other girl's personal space, and for the first time, Jacob could see what Flynn meant about Lamia being twisted – there was a flicker in her eyes, a slightly wild look that didn't bode well. "You might want to be careful, Red," she said, her voice low and hissing. "Accidents happen all the time. Who knows? Someone might find _you_ at the bottom of those steps with a broken neck."

 _Holy shit._ Jacob took a step forward, putting himself within reach of both girls. "You're walkin' a fine line, Lamia. Might want to take a step back," he growled. He might not ever hit a woman, but if she got any closer, he would _make_ her back up. Behind him, he heard the shuffling of feet as Eve, Flynn, and Ezekiel all stood up, too.

The silent battle of wills held for another moment, but then Lamia smiled widely and took a step back. Jacob let out a breath he hadn't realised he held as she took a step back. "See you later, Red." She looked up at Jacob with that same wild gleam in her eyes, blew him a kiss, then turned and stalked away.

Once she was out of earshot, Jacob grasped Cassandra by the shoulders and turned her to face him. "Are you out of your _mind?"_ he asked, giving her a little shake. "Jesus H. Christ, Cassie. We all know that she is out of her damn mind, and you're gonna go jabbin' at her with a pointy stick? What were you thinkin'?" He'd never admit it to anybody – not out loud, at least – that it was kind of hot to watch her square off with Lamia like that, and right now, he was more concerned with the fact that the crazy bitch had all but threatened to push her down the goddamned stairs.

She lifted her chin to look at him, resting her hand on Mel's head. "I was thinking that I don't like it when people mess with my friends."

* * *

Lance Dulaque – Guinevere, coyote, _Canis latrans._ Coyotes are able to adapt to environments modified by humans, one of the most widespread wild canids in North America. In Native American culture, the coyote is a trickster god, miracle-worker, shapeshifter, and troublemaker. Coyotes are generally seen as symbols of bad luck and are believed to the source of all evils in the world. Guinevere was the wife of King Arthur, whose adultery with Sir Lancelot brought about a civil war leading to Arthur's death and the destruction of his kingdom.


	9. Whatever Is Fickle

Trying to explain to Dulaque that he couldn't stay after school because he was supposed to take care of his sisters didn't get him anywhere. The prick said with sanctimonious loftiness that there was such a thing as babysitters for a reason and no excuses would change his punishment. It wasn't even an excuse anyways, merely a request to change the time of his detention, and a damn good reason, too. It still didn't change anything. So Tuesday morning, before the school bus arrived, he gave Leah a twenty dollar bill, told her to order a pizza, and behave until he got home, which meant keeping the front door locked and not opening it for anybody except Isaac or himself and not completely wrecking the house.

Jacob had thought that detention would've meant writing lines or maybe some kind of paper or essay, something along those lines, but he was wrong. Apparently, due to recent budget cuts, detention meant cleaning.

Which was how he ended up in the gym with a bucket and mop. And he wasn't alone, either. Coach Heyer escorted in a tall, slender, well-dressed girl that had dark hair and Hispanic features; her dæmon was a large, marbled barn cat that looked ready to scratch the living shit out of anything that happened to piss him off right about now. She was a senior this year and therefore didn't mingle with lowly sophomores like Jacob, but he still knew her due to the fact that there were plenty of murmurs in the mill pertaining to her, none of them particularly kind.

Heyer was almost taller than Dulaque, like someone had put him in a taffy puller until he was made of all arm and leg; it was easy to see how he had been a basketball player before becoming coach. There was a tired, haggard look to his face, like he didn't want to be there anymore than they did. Jacob had heard other teachers offering him condolences, something about his daughter being sick in the hospital, and it gave him new respect for the man. Heyer gave the girl one of those long, fuzzy brooms that the janitors pushed around the hallways between classes. "You'll clean the whole court, one end to the other, and once you're done, you can leave," he said shortly, leaving no questions to be asked. "The back doors are locked, and I'll be out in the hallway waiting." With that, he turned and walked out, his sheepdog dæmon slouching after him, and Jacob saw him taking out his phone as the doors swung shut.

"What's your name?" Jacob asked as they made their way to the end of the gym, her with the broom and him with the little bucket and mop. He might not have ever been in detention before, but he'd been in trouble before, and his old man was a firm believer in physical labor being suitable punishment. Talking made the work go faster, be it cleaning a gym floor or clearing the overgrowth out of a backyard.

"Estrella de la Hoya," she replied, her Spanish accent faint but still proud.

"Jacob Stone. I heard some folks talkin' about you. I thought you were the bullied, not the bully," he said as he wrung out the mop.

 _"Sí._ That _pendejo_ tried to put hands on me, so I punched him in right in his _egoísta y confidente_ face _._ Gave him a bloody nose," Estrella de la Hoya replied, her dæmon angrily swatting dust bunnies around the floor, obviously pushing the limits of their bond as he was nearly under the bleachers by now.

"Sounds like self-defense to me," Jacob said, the smell of lemon cleaner assaulting him as he drew the mop back and forth in long sweeps across the floor, walking backwards to avoid slipping.

"It is. But Señor Dulaque is a homophobic fascist, therefore I am here."

"Ah, so the rumours are true."

She paused in sweeping the dust away from the floor, bracing her arms against the handle and turning to look at him. "And what rumours might those be?" she asked.

Jacob turned to give her a saccharine-sweet grin. "That Dulaque's a fascist. Of course," he replied.

She gave him a _look_ that said she knew he was full of shit, lips twitching upwards. He'd heard, along with everybody else in school, about her having a more-than-strictly-friendly relationship with a girl from another school. An all-girls Catholic school, too. The irony always made him chuckle. "Of course," she repeated. "And what about you, _amigo?_ What have you done to land yourself here?"

He growled low in his throat, sloshing dirty water onto the floor as he moved the bucket out of the way with a little more force than was strictly necessary. "A sick bitch's idea of a prank getting blamed on me," he answered stiffly.

"A prank? Oh, so _you're_ slaughterhouse boy, the one with the dead rat in the locker," Estrella de la Hoya drawled in realisation.

Jacob winced at the nickname. _Is that really what they're calling me? Fan-fucking-tastic._

"Aren't there child labour laws against this?" she muttered after several moments of working in silence.

"Probably. But shit like that doesn't count in high school. Principals are kinda like the captains of ships in international waters. I heard somewhere that he can even marry people," he answered, then with a sly glance he added, "Maybe not _you,_ but…"

The dark-haired girl shook the broom at him, sending a flurry of dust in his direction; Laghu sneezed. "Very funny, _amigo_. Very funny."

Jacob chortled. Even with the anger still simmering away just underneath his breastbone, this was turning out to be the most interesting detention he'd ever had. Not that he'd ever had detention before, but still. "Correct me if I'm wrong, Estrella de la Hoya, but didn't you used to date a guy going here?" he asked when they'd crossed the half-court line.

"I did. He's the _pendejo_ that tried grabbing my ass," she replied. "Apparently, he thought that I was only seeing…someone else…to get a reaction from him," she replied, catching herself before she let slip the name of her not-so-secret girlfriend or outed herself by admitting that 'someone' was a girl. Despite the fact that everybody _knew_ it was true, and she knew that they knew, she had never actually said out loud that she was gay. He got the feeling that it was a point of personal pride for her not to say it.

"But you weren't."

"But I wasn't. He was my first real romantic relationship, and after him, I decided that…" Estrella paused for a moment, apparently searching for words, then said, _"Si vas a amar a alguien, ama a alguien que arruina tu lápiz labial, no tu rímel."_

Jacob grinned down at the floor and decided not to tell her that of the six languages he could currently speak fluently, Spanish was the first one he'd learned.

"So, tell me, what did you do to piss off that _perra loca,_ Lamia? She is the one who did it, no?" she asked. Her dæmon had apparently decided that the dust bunnies had received suitable punishment and had padded back over to them, weaving back and forth between Estrella's ankles as she walked, pushing the broom.

"I'm surprised the entire school doesn't know by now," he answered honestly. "She was messin' with me an' my friends, so I…I startled her."

The girl turned to look at him again. "Really? She broke your locker and filled it with raw meat because you startled her?"

"Well…she may or may not have been standing next to a fountain that she might've…fallen into in front of everybody, because I startled her," Jacob revised.

Estrella covered her mouth to hold in an abrupt bark of laughter, but her dæmon made no such restraint. He broke into outright laughter, leaping in the air and coming down rolling, on his back with all four paws waving in the air, doing a fairly good impression of a human being seized with mirth. "You're a dead man, _amigo._ You know that, right?" she asked once she'd managed to get her laughter under control.

The smile spilled out of his expression as he remembered the scene on the hilltop. _Accidents happen all the time. Who knows? Someone might find_ you _at the bottom of those steps with a broken neck._ Dead meat. "Apparently so," he muttered under his breath, no longer finding anything about the situation humorous.

She heard the change in his voice, because he felt her touch his back, and he glanced over his shoulder at her. "You alright?" she asked.

"Not really," he answered. "I don't think Lamia's through messing with me. Or my friends. She seems like the hold-a-grudge-until-you-die type." He'd been aiming for joking, but the look on her face told him that he'd missed by a country mile. "It doesn't matter anyway. It's pretty damn obvious that there's nothing I can do about it."

"What makes you say that?" Estrella demanded sharply.

"Apparently, she's made of fucking Teflon because I'm here…and she's not. That should tell you all you need to know." She scowled at him, and Jacob waved a hand, brushing aside the conversation. "Look, let's just get this done, alright? I gotta get home and make sure my sisters haven't burned the house down by now," he muttered, grabbing the mop and sloshing more water onto the floor.

He could feel Estrella staring hard at his back, but rather than press the issue, she sighed heavily and started pushing the broom again. They didn't talk again for the rest of detention. When they finished, Heyer didn't bother looking to see if they'd actually done anything at all; he just told them they were free to go and he'd see them again on Thursday. Jacob noticed how he kept reaching down to ruffle his dæmon's ears with the absent mindlessness of a nervous tick; he wondered if the man had spent all his time on the phone with the hospital.

The hallways felt cooler without the press of hundreds of bodies there to provide warmth, and their footsteps echoed up the corridors. As they got to the front doors, Estrella reached out to touch his arm. "Listen, _amigo,_ I'm sorry that you're being punished for something you did not do. Dulaque is…" She spat out something in Spanish, too quick for him to follow but surely degrading the man's intelligence and parentage; her dæmon hissed agreement as he wove between her ankles, fluffed up in agitation. "But I'm glad to have met you."

"Me, too," Jacob replied honestly. He hadn't expected to make a friend doing this.

 _"Mi hermano_ is having a party this weekend with some friends from the community college. Why don't you and your _amigos_ come over and have a good time? Miguel won't mind," she offered with a smile, touching his arm with a grin.

His eyebrows shot up. "Are you, a senior, actually inviting a lowly sophomore like me to a party?" he asked in disbelief. He'd never been invited to _anything_ before, not even back in Anais.

Estrella rolled her eyes and pushed against his shoulder as they went down the front steps. The cool air eddied past lightly, and Laghu crawled beneath Jacob's collar to stay warm. "Yeah, I am. And if the party sucks, we can sit on the porch and talk about the idiocy of having a homophobic fascist be in charge of children," she offered with a smile.

They'd reached the edge of the parking lot, stopping next to a mint-green VW Bug that he supposed had to be her car. She rummaged in her pockets for a moment, taking out a gum wrapper and a pen; she scribbled down an address and phone number on it and pressed the slip into his hand. "Here. Give me a call if you decide to come."

He smiled as he tucked the slip of paper into his pocket. "Thanks, Estrella. So…see you on Thursday?"

 _"_ _Sí_ _._ Maybe we'll get to scrape gum off the bleachers next time," she said, and he made a face.

"Yeah, maybe not. Bye." He turned and walked across the parking lot towards the sidewalk, hands shoved in his pockets. It'd only been about two hours, so the odds were good that the girls hadn't actually burned down the house. Whether or not they'd made a total mess of things…that remained to be seen.

A horn honking made him jump slightly. Estrella had driven up beside him, the windows rolled down, and she leant over to call at him, "And Jacob? Make sure you bring your friends with you this weekend. Especially your little redheaded _amiga._ She's single, right?" she asked, wagging her eyebrows, and he burst out laughing. She blew him a kiss and drove away.

* * *

Estrella – Astro, domestic cat, _Felis catus_. Cats have long been associated with magic and witchcraft, the black cat being the common witch's familiar, and also symbolize immortality and rebirth, having nine lives; Egyptians used to worship cats as deities. Cats are also seen as feminine animals, counteracting the masculine canine. Astro is the Spanish translation of "star," in the masculine form. The feminine form is "Estrella.


	10. Slipping Underneath

"Wait, you _what?"_ Ezekiel's mouth fell open in shock, gaping at Jacob in disbelief. Aur chittered at him, normally-pristine golden fur fluffed up in both surprise and slight jealousy. "You got invited to a _party?_ A party being held by _seniors?"_

"And a couple of students from the community college," Jacob felt obliged to add, trying and miserably failing to keep the smug grin off his face. It was the first time that he'd ever actually seen Ezekiel Jones look speechless before, and it was a pretty damn good feeling.

"Hot damn. Two days in detention, and you're already cooler than us," Eve laughed, tipping her chair on its back legs, arms folded across her chest. "Next thing you know, you're gonna be sitting at someone else's table and saving different geeks..." Flynn blushed red up to the hairline, Koyi chirruping and ruffling his feathers. "...and you'll forget all about us."

Rolling his eyes, he stretched out one leg and lightly nudged Eve's chair; she wobbled and hastily slammed back down onto all four legs before she could fall over. "Ain't gonna happen. Besides, Estrella said you guys were all invited, too," he added. He'd only known them for a few months, but Jacob couldn't quite imagine ever forgetting about them, not even Ezekiel, annoying little pest that he was. They were the only thing that kept him coming to school. If not for the fact that he shared a class with each one of them at some point in the day, not to mention forty minutes when they sat together at lunch, he might've already dropped out, gotten his GED online. He'd never realised it until now, but he'd never had friends before, and he wasn't about to forget them.

Cassandra let out a little squeak of excitement. "Really? We can come, too?" she asked, almost bouncing in her chair. He had a feeling that she'd never been invited to anything before, either. Laghu chortled at her obvious excitement, currently sitting atop Mel's head between her ears, the hyena dæmon's stubby tail flicking double-time, grinning with all her white teeth.

"Yeah, all of us can," he replied with a grin.

Flynn leaned forward, pointy elbows on the tabletop, chin in his hands. "I've never been to a party before. At least, not since my cousin Milo's sixth birthday party, but that doesn't really count, does it?"

"No, but good try," Eve answered.

Jacob looked over at Ezekiel; the kid was still looking mildly put-out, Aur picking at his shining fur imperiously. "Well, Jones? Are you comin' with or not?"

"Are you kidding? I was gonna gate-crash anyways, mate. This just saves me the trouble. Nobody throws a party without Ezekiel Jones."

* * *

 _"Mi amigo,_ you made it!" Estrella laughed as they came up the sidewalk in front of her house, the sound of music and laughter filtering out through the evening air. She was wearing a floral-patterned sundress with matching jewelry, her hair brought up in a complicated-looking array of braids and curls, her dæmon looking sleek and much happier than before, purring as he wove between her ankles. She jumped off the front porch and ran down to meet them, slinging an arm around his shoulders. "And you brought your friends with you! _Fantastico,_ the more the merrier. So, who do we have here?" she asked.

"This is Cassandra, Eve, Flynn, and Ezekiel. Guys, this is Estrella de la Hoya, my fellow student criminal," he introduced, gesturing to each of his friends as he named them, and she tweaked his ear at the last comment.

"Student criminal, my ass. More like victims of a homophobic fascist," she replied, and he chortled. "Well, any friend of Jacob is welcome here, come on in and enjoy yourselves." Grabbing Jacob's wrist in one hand and Cassandra's in the other, she pulled them up the walk into the house, filled with other people, some from school, others a few years older from the community college. The interior was tastefully decorated with classic Spanish designs and artwork, some of which Jacob recognised as originals along with a few very good replicas. "The kitchen is right through there, feel free to help yourselves to drinks, plenty to go around." From the general direction of the backyard, there was a tidal roar of cheering, whoops, and cries of "Go, Miguel!" and Estrella sighed, shaking her head. "If you would excuse me for just one moment, I need to make sure _mi hermano_ is not trying to dive off the roof into the pool again." She released them and slipped out of the sliding patio door.

Jacob turned to look at his friends. "What d'you guys think?" he asked, making his way over to the kitchen table, which held a large ice chest full of canned soda and beer, swimming in a mix of ice cubes and cold water.

"I think this place is great," Ezekiel enthused, bouncing on his toes. "Suddenly, I like you a whole lot more, cowboy. Oi, come with me, grasshopper." He seized Flynn by the elbow and started pulling him along.

"Wh-what for?" the skinny boy yelped, Koyi fluttering around in circles.

"I saw the Italian bird over there, you're gonna be my wingman. She gets one look at you, and I'm golden," Ezekiel replied, towing Flynn away with surprising strength as Aur smoothed down his fur importantly.

Eve burst out laughing at the helpless look Flynn threw her before being dragged into the crowd by the smaller teen. "Toss me one of those, I'm gonna go referee," she said, and Jacob tossed her a can of soda, shaking the cold water off his hands. She was still snickering as she followed after Flynn and Ezekiel, Paznic shaking his head in good-natured exasperation at the two of them.

Jacob took out another can and handed it to Cassandra. "Well, what about you? Your first party, what d'you think of it?" he asked. It was quieter in the kitchen, most of the other people either in the living room or out in the yard, so it was really just the two of them.

"It's...it's different than what I expected," Cassandra admitted, one hand tightly gripping the can, the other curled in Mel's thick, stiff mane. "I mean, my parents had parties sometimes, but with them it was real...reserved, I guess. No music, just a lot of quiet talking and condescending looks."

"Adults are like that. I swear, it's like you hit twenty-five or something, and then everybody gets a stick up the ass," Jacob agreed, and she nearly snorted soda out of her nose laughing, Mel cackling in glee next to her. "C'mon, wanna go outside, see if anybody's actually gonna jump in the pool?" he offered. Still giggling, she nodded and looped her arm through his, walking out the sliding door into the backyard. There were several people in the pool, some of whom were fully-dressed, suggesting that they had already made the jump from the first-story overhang into the pool, and he could see Estrella standing over by the patio, scolding a pair of young men that were trying to shimmy up the drainpipe onto the roof to make their own leap.

"Hey, I'll be right back, I think Eve's flagging me down," Cassandra said, and he turned his head to spot the blond waving an arm in their direction, a grin plastered on her face.

"Probably needs someone to help rescue Flynn. Signal me if you need backup," he replied, and she giggled as she made her way across the yard to the other girl.

"This is great," Laghu murmured in his ear, and for once, Jacob was wholly inclined to agree with his dæmon.

As he was considering going over to Eve, just to see what kind of stunt Ezekiel was trying to pull of with his unwilling 'wingman,' a young man with rumpled dark hair and a scruffy beard appeared at his elbow, smelling very strongly of beer, dæmon staggering along next to him. "Can you swim?" the young man asked, his Spanish accent largely slurred, making a strange waving gesture with his one hand.

"Uhm, yeah, why—?" Two pairs of hands seized his arms from behind, knocking his drink out of his hands, and Jacob gasped as one of them squeezed hard on his bruises, sending a sharp, hot ache through his arm. Then he was being pulled right off his feet and thrown into the pool with a tremendous splash.

The slap of being abruptly submerged in cold water was second to the overwhelming sense of terror that filled him, the taste of chlorinated water in his mouth, in his lungs as he tried to scream and couldn't because _(splintering wood, protesting metal, and shattering glass)_ he was underwater. Laghu was wheeling in mad circles above the surface, flying to the very edges of their bond, the wrenching pain in his chest bringing him up, flailing and panicking.

Hands on his shoulders pushed him back down, distorted laughter swirling _(fifty feet and thirty-one years gone in an instant)_ past him as he kicked and punched and writhed to be free, get away, get out, chest too tight, oh God he couldn't _breathe..._ He hit something solid, heard muffled yells of pain, and then the hands were gone _(pushing against a door that wouldn't move, glass that wouldn't give)_ and he came to the surface, unaware that he was almost screaming between ragged gasps of air that burned all the way down, choking up water that'd forced its way in his lungs. Coughing and sputtering, the smell of chlorine unbearably strong, Jacob floundered over to the edge of the pool, braced both hands on the edge, and _(water pouring through the gaps in broken glass and twisted metal)_ pulled himself up out of the pool. In his haste, he barked his knee hard against the side of the pool and scraped his hands on the rough, wet pavement, but he was past feeling the pain, nothing except for the relief of being on solid ground and breathing.

Nobody moved to help him, still standing gaping. "What the fuck is _wrong_ with you, you goddamn freak?" demanded the man still in the pool, the one that'd held him under, one hand cupping his jaw where a bruise was already starting to form.

Over the thunderous rushing of his own heartbeat in his ears he could hear Estrella shouting at the young man, had to be Miguel, in Spanish, too rapid for him to follow, hear the hushed murmurs of the onlookers, the scattering of chortles and snickers that were growing louder, gradually swelling. He was aware, agonizingly, terrifyingly aware of everyone _staring_ at him, sitting on the ground looking like a drowned rat, like someone had peeled back his skin and left his nerves exposed, white-hot brands of painful sensation. His chest felt too tight, he couldn't get enough air, and the backyard was suddenly suffocating, pressure slowly but inexorably crushing the life out of him.

Jacob scrambled to his feet, slipping a little on the wet ground. He had to get out, get _away,_ right now, before the whispers and stifled giggles could swell into jeering and outright laughter, because if it did, he would lose his mind entirely, no two ways about it, teetering on the knife's edge of a precipice that he really didn't want to see the bottom of. The crowd slid apart for him like the Red Sea, and he was reminded joltingly of the scene in the hallway after Lamia's prank, nobody wanting to touch him for fear of catching the social plague that he had, the outcast virus. The eyes followed him as he made a run for the door, and he was only vaguely surprised that nobody tried to trip him as he ran past, a foot stuck slyly out to trip him up and watch him fall flat on his face.

He walked.

He didn't really know where he was going, just that it was _away_. Away from the stares and the whispers and the giggles. His entire body was trembling, shaking. His clothes were still streaming water, leaving a drippy damp trail on the sidewalk, his lungs ached from coughing, and chlorine stung his eyes. He could've called his old man for a ride—it was meeting day, Isaac would be sober enough—but the idea of asking his father for help was unbearable, knotting up tightly inside him like barbed wire and salt. One hand was pressed against his chest, holding Laghu to him, right against his heart, and he could feel his soul trembling against his skin, shaking so hard it was like he was set on vibrate.

There was a broken, animalistic whining noise being made, the kind of sound an injured fox would make once it got caught up in a trap. He pressed his free hand over his mouth. The whimper became muffled—it was _him_ making that noise.

"Jacob! Jacob, wait!" a voice shouted after him, running footsteps thumping loudly against the pavement. Cassandra skidded up next to him, panting. "Jacob, hold on. Stop for a second," she gasped, curling her fingers around his wrist, not pulling him but holding nonetheless. "Are you alright?"

A wretched sound that couldn't be called a laugh by any stretch escaped his throat. "Alright? No, I'm not fucking alright."

More footsteps scuffled through the darkness, then Eve, Flynn, and Ezekiel were all there, too; they'd congregated beneath one of the streetlights, standing in a pool of yellowish-amber light, and he could see the concern, the worry in stark relief on their faces.

"I'm not going back," he growled.

"Nobody was gonna ask you to, cowboy," Ezekiel replied. "No offense, but you look like shit." Eve cuffed the smaller boy on the shoulder hard enough to make him stagger. "Ow! What? Honesty's the best policy, innit?"

"Where are you going?" Flynn asked, twisting his long, thin hands together. Koyi hopped from shoulder to shoulder like he did when he was nervous.

He was starting to shiver, not just because of shock but because of cold; it was cooler at night, especially in wet clothes. "I dunno. It doesn't matter. You guys can go back to the party, I'm fine," he muttered back.

Cassandra squeezed his wrist gently. "Jacob," she said in a lightly admonishing voice. "We're not going to leave you by yourself." There was so much in her voice, worry and concern and kindness, that it made his chest ache, not just from coughing, either. Laghu wriggled free of his hand and fluttered damply over to land on Mel's head, snuggling into the soft fur between her ears. "Why don't we go to my place? We can hide out there, nobody will notice us," she offered gently; the others all nodded agreement, then looked back to him.

He sniffled a little, swiping at his face with one sleeve; it didn't do much good. His throat felt like it'd been scrubbed out with steel wool. Shivering, he looked around the small pool of amber-coloured light, saw the same mix of worry and concern on four different faces, all of it for _him,_ and he felt something inside him give way. Jesus, he was tired. He was so tired, and they wanted to take care of him, at least for now, and who was he to argue?

"Alright."


	11. In All My Dreams, I Drown

_"This_ is your house?" Ezekiel asked as Cassandra walked up to arguably the biggest house on the block.

"Yep," she replied, pulling a key from a long chain around her neck and unlocking the gate; the kid whistled through his teeth.

Jacob shared the sentiment, though he lacked the will to express it. The house was _huge,_ a tasteful mix of Queen Anne and Colonial architecture, with a good stretch of lawn, surrounded by iron-wrought fence. There were no lights on that he could see, and the driveway was empty, too. Which was good, because he didn't feel up to seeing another adult right now. He was shivering again, all over the place, and his clothes, whilst no longer dripping, were still sodden and clinging to his skin uncomfortably.

Cassandra pushed open the gates; they didn't squeak or creak a bit on well-oiled hinges. "C'mon, the carriage house is around back, nobody goes back there but me," she invited, and they followed her as she went around the house into the backyard, leading up to another small, dark building, too big to be called a shed but not exactly a barn either. She slid back the latch on the door, an actual latch, not a doorknob, and pushed the door open with a squeak.

"Wow," Jacob rasped out when his eyes had adjusted to the dimness.

It was a long, narrow room so crowded with junk—furniture, boxes, crates, books, more boxes, odds and ends of all kinds, even pieces of machines and engines—that it was impossible to walk in a straight line to the back wall, which was so far away that it was no more than a foggy grey haze in the low darkness. There were a few stalls where horses had once been kept, though they probably hadn't housed an animal in fifty years or more. He inhaled through his nose and it smelled just like the barn back on the ranch house, a perfume of stale hay, gasoline, turned dirt, and wood baked and aged for eighty summers. If he was still a kid, he'd have lived in this place, climbed over everything he could, made himself the coolest fort _ever_ out of pieces of furniture, and spent hours in the rafters with the pigeons and sugar gliders, presuming they even had sugar gliders in Portland. He didn't think so.

Cassandra plucked at his sleeve, and they followed after her, single-file, through a narrow path that'd been cleared through the junk to one of the horse stalls, where most of the crap had been cleared out. There was an overstuffed chair and chaise lounge wedged in there, along with a sofa that actually had all of its legs and cushions. She'd obviously gone to some effort to clean out at least this one little corner, and it was easy to imagine her sitting out here by herself, reading with Mel.

He sat down on the chaise, and Cassandra produced a clean, fluffy towel from somewhere, tossing it around his shoulders. "Jacob?" she asked softly as he pulled the towel around his shoulders, drawing the terrycloth over his head a cowl, trying to dry his hair off before he ended up with a cold. "What happened?"

He sighed softly, pushing the towel back off his head. The others were all looking at him expectantly, but not demanding. He didn't have to tell them. If he said right now that he didn't want to talk about it, they'd let it go. "I…uhm, when I was a kid, I got in a car wreck. It wasn't that bad, really, ain't nobody got hurt but…I had nightmares for a while after," he said quietly. Laghu was shaking again, and he cupped one hand around the tiny soul. "Last year, though, my mama…" The words burred in his throat, he had to swallow hard before they loosened up enough to come out. "She was driving home, and another car…another car hit her, and drove her off a bridge into the river under it."

Cassandra had slid closer to him while he spoke, and now she curled one arm over his shoulders, and he leant into her side. Mel was pressed as close to them as she could be without breaking the taboo, and he could feel the other dæmon's breathing on his arm.

"But she didn't…" He had to stop, swallowing again. His chest was getting tight again; that pain that'd slowly faded into a dull, low ache that he was almost used to carrying around with him was slowly becoming sharper and sharper, cutting into him anew. "The impact didn't…didn't kill her. The car sank, and…she couldn't get the doors open, they were banged up in the crash. So when it filled up with water, she—she—"

Laghu let out a wrenching sob, the noise that Jacob refused to make himself, and he shuddered, pulling his knees up towards his chest as if to stop those broken pieces of himself from falling out.

Cassandra pulled him closer, hugging him tight against her, and he turned his face into her shoulder as he forced himself to breathe deeply and not break apart. She smelled like strawberries. Another arm went around his back, and he turned his head slightly to see Eve sitting on his other side, rubbing one hand up and down his spine, the other draped over Paznic's broad, bristly shoulders.

Jacob took a slow, shuddering breath and looked over at Ezekiel and Flynn. Both were holding their respective dæmons just as tightly to themselves, and they both met his eyes, holding for a moment before nodding. They were guys, they didn't do the huggy, touchy-feely stuff, but that didn't mean they didn't sympathize or understand. "I have nightmares again," he said, voice thicker and rougher but still his, "About the wreck, but now I'm underwater, an' I can't get outta the car, an' I'm drowning, I'm always drowning."

He could've found the words, if he tried, to explain how terrified he was when those college kids threw him in the pool and ducked him under, how it was suddenly like being in the middle of his nightmare all over again, stuck under the water with no way out, just like his mama had died. He was shaking again, though he hadn't noticed it, hard enough that his teeth were chattering.

After a moment, Cassandra removed her arm from his back, smoothed his damp hair back, and stood up. Picking her way through the clutter, she started opening and peeking into a few boxes, then reached in one, drawing out a couple of winter coats, big, ugly, fluffy things of varying, garish colours. She tossed a few at him, and his arms moved on instinct to catch them. "Cass?" he mumbled.

"Get some sleep, dummy," Mel growled at him as Cassandra dug more coats from the box and unearthed a patched quilt from another, handing them out.

"Wh-what?" Jacob looked from the jackets in his hands to Cassandra, then over to Eve, then at Flynn and Ezekiel. They were all making themselves comfortable as they could on the odd assortment of furniture in the stall. "You guys don't have to – to do this, I can – "

"Oi. Shut up," Ezekiel cut him off as he toed off his sneakers and pulled the patchwork quilt around him. Eve clapped him on the shoulder and got up. Flynn jumped up to let her on the sofa, the geek choosing to sprawl out on the floor instead, and Cassandra took up the armchair, taking off her shoes.

Jacob swallowed hard, feeling the pressure in his chest and throat again, and he had to cup a hand around Laghu's small, shaking body so his dæmon didn't fall off his shoulder. "I-I – " he tried to speak, but Cassandra fixed him with a look over the edge of the long jacket that she'd covered herself with; she was small enough that she only needed one.

"Go to sleep, Jacob. We're not going anywhere, and neither are you," she said firmly.

He nodded and sank back into his seat, hands shaking, having to blink quickly to keep his vision was blurring, telling himself that it was just chlorine in his eyes.

The coats smelled like mothballs and dust, but when he arranged them over himself like blankets, they were pretty warm. The chaise wasn't exactly a memory-foam mattress, and he didn't imagine that he would be able to sleep, all kinked up the way he was. But, at some point, he closed his eyes for a moment, and when he opened them again, the sky was a long slice of pale pink-gold in the window. Laghu was dry and fluffy and tucked into the crook of his neck, yawning. One of the coats had slid off his legs, the towel was rolled up around his neck and under his ear like an impromptu pillow, and his clothes had almost completely dried, though still somewhat damp. He tilted his wrist to look at his watch – it still ticked, surprisingly. It was quarter to six.

Jacob rolled to his feet stiffly, stretching and feeling his joints pop back into alignment. For a moment, he looked around the cluttered little stall in the carriage house, and his chest felt too small for his lungs and heart, like if he wasn't careful, he might very well suffocate. The others were still asleep, and he stepped over Flynn's long, splayed legs to stand beside the armchair that Cassandra was curled up in. He reached out and touched her shoulder, very lightly, and she shifted slightly, eyes opening slowly. "Hey," he murmured lowly. "I gotta get home before my pop gets up. You tell the others where I went?"

She knuckled her eyes with one hand and nodded. "Okay."

"And tell everyone…thanks. For staying. I…uhm…thanks."

Smiling drowsily, she reached up and patted his hand with hers. "We'll do it again if you need us, Jake. We're your friends. We care about you. You know that…right?" she murmured softly.

He swallowed hard and nodded once, a short, jerky movement. On impulse, he caught her wrist and pressed a kiss to her palm before dropping her hand and straightening up. "See you on Monday?" he asked quietly. "Or…later today, maybe?"

"Probably. I'll text you," she said.

"Alright. Bye." Laghu fluttered down to nip lightly at one of Mel's ears in farewell as he walked towards the door; he paused and glanced back. "Thank you, Cassandra."

She had curled back up in a ball in the armchair, pulling a jacket closer around her, and her voice was drowsy when she answered. "First one's free."

* * *

Laghu flew in wide, swooping circles around his head as he walked home, and Jacob smiled as he walked, hands shoved in his pockets. He climbed up the ivy trellis that scaled the side of the house – thank God it wasn't roses – and shimmied open his window with one hand. He inched a little further up the trellis, slung one leg over the sill, and tipped himself towards the window, catching the edges of the frame and ducking inside.

As he was sliding the window shut, Laghu bit his ear sharply, and Jacob whirled around.

Isaac was leaning against the doorframe, Geri crouched at his heels like a sand-coloured shadow, hackles lifting, though she didn't growl. Jacob's heart sank, his stomach knotting over on itself until he had a solid stone in the middle of his gut, and he leant back against the windowsill, gripping the wood tightly with both hands.

"Where you been?" Isaac asked.

"I-I went out with some friends from school, sir," Jacob replied quietly, keeping his head bowed, staring at a point at the floor, away from Geri and away from Isaac. "I fell asleep, it was an accident. I didn't want to wake up the girls coming up the stairs." It wasn't a lie – he knew better than to lie. The stairs and the hallway both creaked, and all three girls were almost freakishly light sleepers. He could drop a pin outside their doors and they'd wake up.

"Nobody said that you could go out anywhere, boy," his old man said in a soft, cold voice, "much less spend the night away from the house. What about your sisters? Who was watching them all night?"

"I thought that was your job," Jacob answered and immediately regretted it.

Isaac's dark eyebrows rose towards his hairline, stubbornly refusing to recede despite it being more salt than pepper nowadays. "My job?" he repeated quietly. Hackles lifting further, Geri pulled her lips back from her teeth, gleaming very white against her dark muzzle. In two long strides, Isaac was across the room, and he closed his hand over the back of Jacob's neck, heavy, callused, and strong from years of working on a rig. "My job, _boy,_ is to provide for this family. You understand that, you ungrateful punk? I don't see you doin' anything like that, huh? Do I? So where the hell do you get off on questioning me? Huh?" Isaac gave him a firm jerk with each question, hard enough to make Jacob's teeth rattle; the smell of whiskey was raw and strong on his breath, pelt of the dog that'd bitten him. "From here on out, you don't go any-damn-where without my say-so, hear me? And that means askin' my goddamned permission before goin' out with whatever sorry-ass friends you got."

"I did ask permission to go out, sir. You weren't sober enough to remember," Jacob answered through gritted teeth, even as Laghu hissed for him to _shut the fuck up, don't provoke him._

The hand on the back of his neck tightened until lurid red spots began bursting in the edges of his sight, and his vision began swimming, and the look on Isaac's face made him glad that he got thrown headfirst into the wall right off the bat.


	12. Stripped to the Bone

_He hurt like one big bruise, aching all over the place, and his stomach kept lurching and rolling like he was going to throw up at any moment. His whole body felt hot and cottony and heavy. He was awful thirsty, and his throat ached. Laghu was lying on his legs, heavy and warm, big husky eyes listless. A soft hand smoothed his hair back out of his face, pleasantly cool against his feverish, sweaty skin. Jake opened his eyes to meet a pair that were just as blue as his. "Mama," he mumbled quietly. The bed shifted as she sat down next to him; Adi ran his raspy tongue over Laghu's head._

 _"Shh. You're okay, sugar, just a little sick," she soothed him, running her fingers through his hair. She slid her arms under him, pulled him up into her lap, and bundled him up in her sunrise quilt, the one that Nana had made for her before she died. "Gotta sweat the fever out, honey," she said, rubbing circles on his back. Jake rested his head against her shoulder, her skin cool and soft under his cheek. She rocked him gently, humming "Sea of Love." It was her favourite song, she always played it in the truck._

 _It was raining outside, he could see fat raindrops splattering the windows, drumming on the roof, and the steady sound mixed with Mama's heartbeat under his ear and her husky voice humming. He was so tired. Maybe he wouldn't hurt so much if he went back to sleep, and it was so impossibly warm, and she smelled like safety and home, and he could feel the ghost-tickle of Adi's tongue running over the backs of Laghu's ears. Everything felt fuzzy around the edges, and he closed his eyes._

* * *

Jacob opened his eyes. His entire body felt like it was one big bruise. Each breath made all of his ribs creak and ache as his lungs pushed against them, hot red sensation that swelled and retreated, and his back was made of torn up iron and heavy salt. He could taste copper on his tongue, sweet newpenny flavour, with his heart pulsing behind his eyes, joints clogged with ground glass. The sound of Mama humming "Sea of Love" faded into the sound of his own slow, rough breathing and the sound of rain; he hadn't dreamt that much, at least.

Slowly, holding his breath and trying not to whimper, he put both hands under him, palms flat to the floor, and levered himself halfway upright. He turned over, grabbed the bottom edge of his bedframe, and used it to sit upright. "La-Laghu?" he mumbled; his tongue felt thick and heavy in his mouth, like that time he'd gone to the dentist and had to get Novocain and slurred like a drunk for the next two hours.

He found his dæmon, hiding beneath the dresser, so small that he was almost indistinguishable from a dust bunny or a hairball from the brush. Jacob scooped Laghu in one hand and held the small, silky, fuzzy bundle against his cheek. Stirring weakly, Laghu crawled up into his hair and lay atop his head.

For a moment, he leant back against the side of his bed, focusing on making his lungs work. He rolled his eyes up to look at his alarm clock, blinking little red eyes at him – 11:08. He had been out of it for nearly three hours. Didn't feel like it. Only four hours ago, he'd been asleep on a chaise lounge in the stall of a cluttered old carriage house with the only friends he'd ever had. For a moment, he wanted his mama back so much that it hurt, that ache he'd almost gotten used to carrying now a sharp, burning, throbbing thing snarling in his chest, and he had to cover his mouth with one hand to keep from screaming in frustration at the unfairness of it all.

He could hear his sisters' bright, piping voices downstairs, gales of laughter floating up the stairs, his father's voice carrying after theirs, probably asking them not to run around the house.

A buzzing noise made his head turn, though that made a sharp twinge run through his shoulders and down his back. His phone was on the desk, and taking his hand from his mouth, he reached up to grab it, almost knocking it off the desk. It was Cassandra texting him: _You going to the mall?_ She was the only person he knew that actually typed out whole words and sentences, like a normal person. His throat burred up with wet cotton.

Jacob rose to his feet stiffly, achingly, and hobbled out of his room into the bathroom. Looking in the mirror, he saw his face was unmarked. At least he wouldn't have to explain another shiner to Cassandra; Isaac was aware enough to know not to hit where the bruises showed. Slowly, he grabbed the hem of his t-shirt and pulled it up over his head. Laghu clung tightly to his hair, refusing to let go of him.

His ribs were varying shades of blue-black, which explained why breathing hurt so much. When he turned around and peered over his shoulder to look at his reflection, his back was crossed with long welts, which he knew were from Isaac's belt. He didn't remember it all clearly, not after smacking his head. He reached up and touched the top of his head, fingers gently probing under Laghu's tiny form. There was a sore, achy spot, but no obvious lumps, no blood. Holding his shirt in one hand, he shuffled back into his room and changed his clothes; everything hurt, so he did it slowly and stiffly. He dry swallowed two Advil from the bottle he kept on his dresser and hoped that they'd kick in fast.

Laghu crawled down under his shirt collar, refusing to break direct contact with his skin, and Jacob ran one fingertip down the small dæmon's back. He went downstairs. Each step made fresh aching wash up his frame. Dinah and Rachel were playing some kind of game on the rug in the living room and giggling together as Aadar and Mahaan flitted from shape to shape; he didn't see Leah at all, but she'd been making friends with the girl two houses down and was probably over there. They didn't pay attention to him beyond a reflexive, "Hey, Jake," as he walked over them to the kitchen.

Isaac was in the dining room, sitting at the table with papers spread out in front of him. Geri was sitting in a chair next to him, and Jacob could see the company heading at the tops of several pages. There was a glass next to his elbow, but the liquid in it was clear, just water – Isaac didn't drink vodka.

"Hey, Pop?" he asked hoarsely, leaning against the doorframe.

"Hm?"

"Some friends of mine are goin' out. Is it alright that I go with?"

"I expect you back in this house by six."

"Yessir. Thank you, sir." He turned away and went to put on his shoes; with his free hand, he took out his phone and answered Cassandra: _Sure. Food court?_

 _See you there._

* * *

He was surprised to see Cassandra sitting by herself at one of the cheap plastic tables, her eyes downcast and one hand stroking Mel's ears. "Hey," he greeted, and she lifted her head to look at him with a smile, though it wasn't nearly as bright as he was used to seeing.

"Hey, Jake," she replied, moving her hand as Laghu fluttered over to take up his usual place perched on Mel's head between her ears.

"Where's the rest of the geek squad? As I'm to understand it, this is the usual territory in which to find a wild Ezekiel," Jacob said as he pulled out the chair opposite hers and sat down as casually as he could, despite the fact that his back and ribs protested that very much. Advil could only do so much.

Cassandra shrugged one shoulder. "Apparently, everyone else's parents weren't too pleased with them staying out all night without permission," she replied, and he didn't need to fake his wince.

"I told you guys, ya didn't have to – "

"Drop it," she cut him off, but not unkindly. "We're your friends, and we aren't just going to leave you."

That made him feel itchy in his own skin, an unfamiliar, comfortable warmth that prickled over his nerve endings, and he shifted in his chair, biting back another wince. "What about you?" he asked at last, deciding to leave that subject where it was and not poke it with a stick anymore.

One shoulder moved again, but this time Mel shifted her spotted bulk as well, like she was uneasy. "I don't think they even noticed I was gone," she replied, and though her voice sounded perfectly nonchalant, there was an undercurrent of ache to it that made him want to lean across the table and hug her or something. But then she sat up a little straighter and the moment was gone. "So, what do you want to do today? I mean, we've got the weekend. Hopefully it'll go better than the rest of our week has gone, right?"

Jacob sat back a little in his chair. "I was thinking about Lamia, actually," he said.

"Really?" Mel asked, sitting upright so quickly that Laghu wobbled a little on her head, like some kind of strange dæmon hat. "Because – "

"Shut up," Cassandra hissed down at her dæmon.

Mel snorted. "Why? You know as well as I do that – "

 _"Melpomene,"_ the redhead warned.

"What?" Jacob demanded. "Tell me. What is it?"

Girl and dæmon had a silent staring contest for a moment, but then Cassandra sighed defeat and grabbed her bag, which had been on the floor next to her chair. "We found this in our mailbox this morning," she said, pulling out a doll. It had on a frilly blue dress and shiny red hair tied in a ribbon. Someone had dislocated the doll's head out of the socket so it flopped brokenly. Like it had a broken neck.

 _Someone might find_ you _at the bottom of those steps with a broken neck._ A chill dragged one sharp fingernail down his backbone, and Laghu fluffed himself up, baring small fangs in an angry hiss. "That...crazy, insane, psychopath," he muttered. Anger began to curl up in his chest like a venomous serpent, chasing away the brief chill with its heat, and he clenched both hands in fists. Forget about just 'thinking' about it, he was going to _do_ it. "I'm going to get that bitch. I don't care if she wants to fuck with me, but you didn't do anything to her."

Cassandra stared at him. "Jake, what are you talking about? What do you mean? We already know that Dulaque won't do anything, and she hasn't done anything illegal. What are you going to do?" she asked, wariness creeping into her voice.

"We've said it before that there's no way that she can do all this shit and nobody ever have proof of it. Guess I'll just have to find some, then. See how much she likes it when somebody leaves her a gift in her locker," he answered.

She blinked rapidly, staring at him in disbelief. "I-I'm sorry, I must've had some common sense in my ear. Did you actually just suggest that we try to _blackmail_ Lamia Aberforth? You – you really do have a death wish, don't you? We do that, and the next thing she leaves in your locker isn't going to be hamburger."

"We have to do _something,"_ he insisted. "If we don't, then nobody else is going to. Dulaque is in her back pocket thanks to her parents' money. No teacher can do anything because he'd probably find a way to get them fired. And everybody else is scared of her."

"For a _good reason_. Dead rat, locker?" Cassandra repeated, then held up the doll; its head flopped the wrong way in a decidedly grotesque way. "Creepy doll in mailbox? If she catches us, she's gonna do worse than this."

 _"If._ That's the key word, Cassie. _If_ she catches us. Which she won't. You, me, and Flynn, we're the probably the smartest people in the school. Eve can kick anybody's ass, and if anything goes wrong, hell, we can just blame it on Jones. Between the five of us, who's to say that we couldn't bring that bitch down a peg or two?" Jacob demanded, leaning forward slightly. He'd been longing to get back at Lamia somehow after the locker stunt, after what she'd said to Cassandra, and now for this, too. Somebody needed to snub her close before she did somebody actual damage, and he felt like they were just the people for the job.

Cassandra stared at him for a long moment across the table with her poker face on, but then the corner of her mouth began to inch upwards. Mel's stubby tail was flicking double-time, grinning and starting to chuckle softly in her throat. "I can't decide if you're a madman or a genius," she sighed at last.

Jacob grinned and settled back in his chair, his aching suddenly not as bad as before. "Don't they kind of go hand-in-hand?"


	13. Swing With Both Fists

"Okay, okay, so let me make sure that I have this clear. You want us to pull off some kind of undercover mission of blackmail and humiliation against literally the scariest bitch in school, knowing that it's very likely she will kill us and sew our skin into her clothing if she ever catches us?" Ezekiel asked, pinching the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger, Aur mimicking his posture on one shoulder.

The mall was fairly empty today, which was both surprising and pleasant, because they could actually sit and talk to each other without having to raise their voices over the dull surf-roar of chatter that flowed and ebbed outside of every shop door. It'd become a kind of weekend thing for them, going out to the mall. Jacob liked it; he'd never had any such friends or any kind of habit with them back in Anais with the people he'd grown up around his entire life. It was strange to think about, but it was becoming familiar.

"Yeah, that's it," Jacob replied with a smirk, poking at the bowl of ice cream he'd bought from the shop at the end of the food court. It was tiny place but damn, they had good ice cream. Laghu clung to his wrist, poking out a small tongue to snatch sprinkles, which was about all he could handle – trying to get ice cream out of fur was absolute hell.

"Oh, my God, I've made friends with a bunch of nutters. Totally bonkers, the entire sodding lot of you," the Australian boy sighed, brandishing his spoon and sending sticky droplets of melted ice cream flying.

"I like it," Flynn said, surprisingly, as he scraped his spoon around his bowl, licking every drip of sweetness from the dish. Koyi had fluffed out his glossy black feathers and was hopping back and forth with excitement, fluttering his wings.

Eve turned in her chair to look at him. "You do know that she's probably going to come after us now, too? Which means you might get the meat-locker surprise or the creepy doll of doom?" she reminded him, but it didn't sound like she was trying to deter him. More like she was impressed and wanted him to make sure he knew the consequences before he signed the devil's contract.

Flynn pushed his glasses up his nose and straightened up a little in his chair, raising his chin. "I've been pushed around my whole life by people like Lamia Aberforth, Eve. She's not gonna stop with us. She'll do this to anybody that pisses her off until somebody pushes back," he said firmly.

Grinning, she reached out and clapped him on the shoulder with one hand, almost knocking him sideways off his chair. It was hard to tell if a boar was smiling, but it was obvious that Paznic was, pawing at the scratched tile floors with his small, sharp hooves. Eve turned back towards Jacob, dropping one arm over her dæmon's back, patting his bristly flank. "So what's our plan of action, commander?"

He rolled his eyes but was smiling anyways. "First of all, we need to find someplace to go, definitely not here. Someplace that nobody else in school is gonna go, because the moment one freaking person hears us talking, everybody's gonna know," he replied.

Laghu stretched his wings imperiously. "I worry about the way information circulates in that school," he said loftily, and Mel snorted, rolling her dark eyes.

"Not to mention the fact that even if we don't find anything to use against her right away, we can always get back at her other ways, too. I mean…there's other fountains for her to trip and fall into, right?" Jacob added with a smirk, scraping his spoon around the edges of the plastic dish. The cold made the inside of his mouth hurt, but it was a pleasant kind of ache.

Cassandra, who'd remained silent thus far as she finished off her deluxe sundae, smiled and said, "I think I know a place."

* * *

The Final Draft Bookstore was one of those few artfully designed buildings that looked deceptively small from the outside but seemed enormous on the inside. Jacob liked to call it TARDIS architecture, no matter that Laghu called him a geek when he did. He inhaled through his nose as they walked in and smiled. This wasn't like the school library, which smelled like carpet and recycled air. This was a real bookstore. Jacob could always tell a real library or bookstore by the smell of it. A room full of books, shelf upon shelf of decaying verse, forgotten history, and disintegrating fiction, smelled like dessert, a rich confection of glue, vanilla, figs, ink, and cleverness, mingled with the perfume of lacquer and wood polish.

There was an illuminated fish tank set into the wall as large as a coffin, with a single lone gold koi swimming happily around its bubbler, long whiskers lending it a wise-old-man appearance. Jacob approached the tank and grinned when he saw that the bottom was not full of sand or pebbles but instead was covered in tiles, Scrabble tiles, thousands of them, all the same four letters – F I S H. Ten points. "Cool," he murmured, then turned his head at the sound of footsteps.

An older man came around the stacks with several books tucked beneath one arm. He was a tall, dapper fellow in a steel grey suit and bowtie, complete with a handkerchief folded artfully in the breast pocket of his jacket, bearing an austere countenance to match his carriage. For a split second, Jacob thought that his suit had a fur collar but then realised that it was actually the man's dæmon, a beautifully sleek ermine that almost blended into his silver-white hair, curled around his nape. Upon seeing them, the man heaved a sigh, his features arranging into an expression of mild annoyance. "Teenagers," he said with disgusted exasperation. "Don't you have a village to burn down?"

Cassandra didn't seem at all perturbed by the man's attitude, grinning broadly at him. "Hello, Mr. Jenkins. It's good to see you, too."

"Hm. And to what do I owe this…certainly dubious pleasure?" he asked, raking his gaze across each of them and their respective dæmons with a deeply calculating look, not judgmental but more like he was evaluating them individually, unusual from an adult.

Jacob had expected her to spout some lie about study group or whatever other reason that five teenagers would be sitting in a library on a weekend afternoon. But then again, maybe he should've remembered just who he was talking about. Cassandra gave the old man, Mr. Jenkins, a pearlescent smile and replied, "We're plotting revenge on a most heinous classmate of ours and needed a private place to scour her past for blackmail-worthy details so nobody tells her what we're up to and ruin the surprise."

 _"Fuck,"_ Laghu whispered hoarsely in his ear. Flynn's eyes went comically wide, and Eve actually threw her hands up in the air. Jacob had never seen someone actually do that before, he found it an interesting sight. Ezekiel just gaped.

Jenkins' eyebrows hiked a little higher, and Jacob was certain the man's dæmon sniggered. "Is that so? And what has this classmate done to earn such a terrible surprise?" he asked, completely blasé, as if asking about the weather or a school project. Now they were all staring at Jenkins, for an entirely different reason.

"She filled Jacob's locker with hamburger, threatened to push me down the stairs, and left a creepy doll in my mailbox," Cassandra answered.

"I see," Jenkins said mildly, as if he'd seen it all before and was no longer surprised by anything they could've said. "Well, you know your way around, Ms. Cillian. There's a vending machine in the reading room. Plotting should never be done on an empty stomach, but the moment I find crumbs, privileges are revoked." And with that, the old man turned and walked back into the stacks to continue shelving books.

Ezekiel turned towards Cassandra with eyes wide and grasped her by the shoulders. "What the actual fuck, Cillian?" he demanded in an awed voice. "How is it that I get my sweet arse handed to me by every adult I come across and you find the one that lets you have snacks for nefarious scheming?"

Cassandra gave him a sly little smile and stroked Mel's ears with one hand, who grinned up at the Australian boy. "Guess I'm just prettier than you, Jones."

"Ain't that the truth," Laghu chortled in his ear; Jacob smiled.

She led them to a separate room in the back of the bookstore, opening a frosted-glass door with a sword detailed on it. There were two vending machines in the back corner and several enormous squashy beanbag chairs, armchairs, and small tables with chairs to sit in, a quiet reading room separate from the stacks. He could overhear his friends' voices through the open door: Flynn was excitedly examining the Final Draft's selection, Eve following along to interestedly look at a few titles herself; Ezekiel was following behind them, not looking at the books but instead suggesting different ways to get back at Lamia, most of which sounded like the plot of _Mean Girls_. Which Jacob had never seen. Nope. Never. He wasn't sure where Cassandra had gone; the girl could move like a ninja sometimes.

"So you must be the intrepid Mr. Stone, the mastermind behind this grand plot," said Jenkins as he came to stand over the table where Jacob was busily filling a notebook with notes. There were half a dozen books stacked next to his elbow on architecture and design in Portland, ones he'd never read; it'd be a good project to have, something to keep him from going completely crazy at home. Laghu crawled between books, muttering as he marked the pages.

"Yessir, I am," Jacob answered without looking up from his notebook.

"Sir? There's no reason to call me sir, Mr. Stone."

"If you say so, sir," he said. It was a response too long ingrained him to ever ignore. "Thank you for letting us use the library for our…nefarious scheming." The corner of his mouth quirked up upon repeating Ezekiel's words.

"Obvious reasons aside, why is it that you are so bent on teaching this classmate a lesson? Surely there are other avenues to take?" Jenkins asked, not moving away but not sitting down, either.

Jacob paused now, sticking his pen into his notebook to mark his place as he looked up at the man. Being seated, Jenkins looked even taller than he was, hands clasped in front of him. With his silvered hair and ascetic expression, he reminded Jacob vaguely of his grandfather, Mama's father. He'd been a stubborn old cuss that smoked cigars 'til the day he died and never got along with Pop, but he wasn't an unkind man, just stern. He didn't think that Mr. Jenkins was the smoking type, but he seemed like a decent guy. "I ain't a fan of bullies, Mr. Jenkins," he said. "Never have been."

There'd been a kid back in Anais, punk-ass by the name of John Morris. He'd been held back a grade and was by default bigger than everybody else and had no problem using that to his advantage, stealing other boys' lunch money and yanking girls' pigtails. In fifth grade, Morris had tried to take the new baseball bat and glove that Jacob had gotten for his birthday, and Jacob had broken his nose with one punch and given him a good kick in the slats once he went down, too. Morris was still a punk-ass, but other kids weren't nearly as scared of him afterwards, once they'd seen him go down. Standing up to the bully didn't magically make them stop being a bully, but it took away their power, some of it, anyways. Lamia was no different than Morris. Just because she didn't steal lunch money didn't make her any less than him; however, if they stood up to her, they'd take away her power and maybe make everybody else realise that she wasn't invincible, wasn't untouchable. Just another punk that could be taken down a peg.

Jenkins eyed him for a long moment, another of those searching gazes that felt like the older man was trying to see _through_ him somehow. "An eye for an eye leaves us both blind, Mr. Stone," he said at last. "'Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.'"

"Martin Luther King, Jr.," Jacob mused, reaching out to run his fingertip down Laghu's back, feeling toothpick bones move under silky fur. "But let me ask you this, Mr. Jenkins. 'Is it better to out-monster the monster or to be quietly devoured?'"

"Nietzsche. Impressive. However, I believe it may just be teenage melodrama to call this girl a monster."

Jacob shrugged. "Maybe. Or maybe she's just a monster waiting to happen. Don't worry, Mr. Jenkins, we're not planning a kidnap/murder scenario. We're gonna give her a taste of her own medicine, make her realise that she can't treat people like shit and expect to get away with it just because her parents have their name on a school building. One less self-entitled bitch to worry about, is that so bad?" he asked.

The corner of the old man's mouth twitched upwards, and unless Jacob misheard, the man's dæmon snickered quietly, still curled imperiously around the nape of his neck. "Whilst I agree with the sentiment, I must warn you to tread carefully, Mr. Stone. I'm old enough to know that sometimes these things turn out badly for all of the involved."

Staring up at the miles-tall figure of the man, Jacob understood that even if he was a crotchety fellow, he wasn't that bad. And it was a refreshing relief to meet an adult that didn't automatically try to tell them to talk out their feelings and hold hands and sing _Kumbaya_. "Thank you, Mr. Jenkins," he said at last. "We're gonna be okay, though. If we need any help, we can always ask you, right?"

Jenkins made a noise of disgust. "Oh, God, absolutely not. I'm not a babysitter, and I have absolutely no patience for teenagers. I'm glad I never was one," he said as he turned and walked away, Jacob staring at his back in puzzled bemusement.


	14. The Sweetest Devotion

Jacob was scrubbing the burnt remains of his father's last attempt to cook from the bottom of a pot with Laghu flying laps around the kitchen when the front door opened to admit the daily tumble of small feet and piping voices calling, "Hi, Jake!" as they stormed up the stairs. But with Laghu's ears, he could hear Leah and Daya whispering to each other just outside the kitchen.

"What are you doin', li'l bit?" he called without looking up from the pot. There was a stubborn ring of burnt-on shit that devoutly refused to be removed.

Leah shuffled into the kitchen looking chagrined, Daya hiding in her hair as a baby gecko, with an envelope clasped in her hands. "Hey, Jake," she muttered in a quiet voice.

"What's that?" he asked, jerking his chin at her hands; Laghu swooped down to hang from the faucet, small claws slipping a little on the chrome. "Another permission slip?"

"Uhm…not really?"

"Are ya askin' me or tellin' me?" He dried his hands off on a towel.

She shuffled closer hesitantly, holding out the envelope to him; Daya hid in her hair until only a set of shiny eyes peeped out between dark strands. Jacob turned it over. Written on the front in that distinctive authoritive teacher's script: _To the Parents of Leah Stone._ He raised an eyebrow down at her. She was studiously examining the toes of her sneakers as if the secrets of the world were written in them somewhere. "This had better not be what I think it is, li'l bit," he warned, peeling the tape off the envelope and opening it.

"I'm sorry, Jake," she mumbled as he unfolded the paper and raked his eyes down the page.

"You got in a _fight,_ Leah? What the hell were you – ?"

"She _started_ it, Jake, I just _finished_ it!" Leah protested loudly. "And it was after the bell rang, so they can't suspend me, either."

He huffed out an irritated breath and threw the letter on the table. "That's beside the point, Leah. What did she even do to you anyways?" he demanded.

"She called Dinah stupid and then she pushed Rachel, too. I told her to quit, and she shoved me down, too, said that I wasn't gonna do anything about it because I was just a stupid skinny little dwarf…so I punched her."

Jacob reached up to pinch the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger, staring up at the ceiling for several long moments. Finally, he lowered his hand to look at her, still standing there toeing the linoleum. "Did you break her nose?" he asked.

Leah raised her gaze to him. "I…I think I did," she answered. "There was a lot of blood, that's for sure. Are you mad at me?"

The corner of his mouth twitched up slightly. "Go to your room and stay there. You won't get dinner tonight. And you're doing the dishes the rest of the week."

"Aw, _Jake…"_

"And the next time you decide to finish something," he said, raising his voice slightly over hers, "make sure you twist your hips into it some. Line it up and put your body weight behind it so you break their nose. You gonna hit someone, hit 'em right. People ain't never gonna take you seriously if you hit like a wuss. And make sure there's no adults around, either, or at least wait until they ain't looking."

She stared up at him for a moment, then grinned. Daya crawled out of her hair and turned into an ermine, his favourite form, curling around her neck. "Okay. Thanks, Jake. You got it."

"Good. Room, now," he said.

The corners of her mouth turned down a little, but she went with a spring in her step anyways, and Jacob found himself smiling as he turned back to the sink, picking up the steel wool pad again. Laghu laughed as he took off, winging around the kitchen again before swooping down to burrow into the top of Jacob's hair. "She's turnin' into us," his dæmon chortled.

Jacob nodded. "Yeah, I know. I don't know whether to be proud or terrified."

"She's a girl. Girls are always scarier. Be terrified."

He chortled again. "Both. I think I'll do both. Proud when it's other people, terrified when it's me."

Laghu gently scratched his claws against Jacob's scalp. "Good plan."

Once he finally managed to scrub every last speck of burnt-on shit from the bottom of the pan, Jacob looked through the fridge, trying to decide what to make for dinner tonight. They didn't have much to go on – time for a store run – but there was a package of ground chuck and all the things needed for stroganoff. Perfect.

As he was dicing onions, Dinah came into the kitchen to wind her skinny arms around his leg, clinging to him like a monkey. Aadar flicked from shape to shape, becoming a bat to mimic Laghu before becoming an Irish setter, wagging his fluffy tail next to their feet. "What's for dinner, Jay?" she asked, butting her head against his side like a kitten demanding pets.

"Stroganoff. Your favourite," he replied with a smile, hearing her giggle delightedly at his side. "And listen, after dinner, I want you and Rachel to bring your laundry basket down, make sure your school clothes are in it so I can wash them all before Monday. Does Mr. Otis need a bath?"

Mr. Otis was a stuffed penguin that Jacob had won for Dinah at the state fair when she was two; she had yet to outgrow sleeping with the plush toy.

"Yeah," Dinah sighed reluctantly. She hated giving up Mr. Otis for his bath, even though it was only for an hour and a half.

Jacob smiled and ruffled her hair, smoothing it down. She didn't have the outright curls that Rachel did, but there was a definite wave to her hair. Her Biblical hero was Samson, and she allowed only one haircut a year. The last trim had been near ten months ago, he'd need to do it again soon to even the ends out. "Wanna help me?" he asked.

"Can I use the knife?"

"Only if I'm watching," he answered. "Go get your stool."

Dinah ran to the pantry to get the small footstool that he had bought for her, dragging it back over to the counter, Aadar becoming a hummingbird to zip and zoom around her head like a brightly-coloured satellite. Sliding the onions aside, he unwrapped the blocks of cream cheese and wrapped her little hand around the haft of the knife. "Now, be very careful, I keep these real sharp," he cautioned. "You know the rules, too. No touching the knives – "

"Unless you're watching," she finished. "I remember, Jay." He kept his hand around her much smaller one, helping her cut the cream cheese into smaller squares, then let her scrape them into the pan and handed her the spoon to stir it together. Jacob remembered Mama doing this same thing for him, letting him stand on his tiptoes on a milk crate and cut vegetables and stir pots of sauce and pasta, steam and pleasant scents wafting into his face. Laghu crawled down the side of his neck to gently scratch his teeth over his skin, soothing him, though it didn't hurt quite as badly as it did months ago.

"Jay?"

"Yes, cricket?"

"Why does Pop sleep so much? Don't he get tired of sleeping?"

 _He gets tired of something, but I don't think the bottle is ever gonna be it._ The thought sprang to mind almost immediately, but he bit it back before it fell out of his mouth. "Well, he's got a lot of work to do, cricket. He had to get a new job when he moved here, and he has to work to make it right, like it was back in Anais. It makes him tired. It'll get better in a few months." He poured a box of pasta into the bubbling water. "Here, switch me."

Dinah frowned as she started stirring the pasta, letting him add finishing touches to the sauce and set it on low heat. "But why doesn't he play with us anymore? We used to go the park and stuff on the weekends, and now we don't."

Laghu fluttered down to land on Aadar's head, now perched atop the fridge as an owl. "Well…he's sad right now, cricket, so he doesn't want to do anything fun. Do you want to do fun things when you feel sad?" the dæmon prompted.

"No, guess not. Is he sad because Mama and Adi went to Heaven?" Aadar queried, looking up at Laghu.

"That's right. He loved Mama very, very much."

"I miss her, too, but Mama wouldn't want us to be sad. She always said that we should be happy because we had a good family that loved each other."

Jacob rested his hand atop her head, smoothing down her hair. "I know you do. So do I, and you're right. Mama wouldn't want us to be sad, but…sometimes it's hard to stop being sad. Sometimes people need to be sad, too. It makes them feel better," he reassured.

Dinah wrinkled her nose. "That's silly."

"Yeah, well, grown-ups are silly. Here. Taste." He offered her the spoon. "Good?"

"Yes."

"Alright. Go get Rachel, the two of you wash your hands, I'll set the table."

* * *

Jacob stretched out on the sofa, gently rubbing behind Laghu's ears with one fingertip as he read one of the new books that he'd checked out of the Final Draft. Well, technically, the Final Draft wasn't a library, but they had an honor system. By which Mr. Jenkins informed him that if he didn't take good care of his books and bring them back in the condition they left, the old man would personally make him clean the fish tank with a toothbrush. Pop hadn't come home yet, which meant one of two things. Either he was logging in extra hours at the office, or he was at the nearest bar. Jacob would put money on the latter before the former.

He picked up his glass – just Coke this time, no Beam – when the stairs creaked softly behind him, and he craned his neck to look. Dinah stood at the foot of the staircase in one of his old t-shirts, her nightgowns, with bedhead for days. One hand clutched Mr. Otis, and Aadar was clinging to her sleeve as a sugar glider. "Hey, cricket, what are you doin' up?" he asked, glancing at his watch – 10:38.

She yawned and didn't answer, instead shuffling over to him and holding up her arms; Laghu used one claw to fold down the edge of their page, and he set the book aside and sat up slightly so she could climb up onto his lap. Jacob bit his lip on a grunt of pain as Dinah's inelegant clambering planted one of her bony little knees square against his groin, but she settled down on his lap, curling up against his chest. Aadar became a mouse and tucked himself underneath her chin. "What's the matter, cricket? Bad dream?" he asked, smoothing her hair back.

"Yeah," she mumbled and clasped Mr. Otis against her chest.

"Want me to bring the radio into your room?" The music would help her sleep sometimes.

Dinah shook her head, her sleep-fuzzy hair tickling under his jaw. "You sing, Jay. I like hearing you sing," she replied.

"Which song?"

"Mama's song, the sea one."

Laghu's sharp claws dug hard enough to draw blood, but Jacob hardly noticed it, focused more on swallowing past the wet cotton that burred up in his throat. The memory/dream of Mama singing to him in the midst of his fever rose to the surface again, and when he was certain that his voice wouldn't break, he hugged Dinah closer and murmured, "Sure, cricket. You got it."

"Sing," Dinah prompted again, cuddling in.

Adjusting his grip on her, he swallowed down the rest of the cotton to clear his throat and began to sing, Laghu humming softly with him:

 _"Come with me, my love, to the sea, the sea of love.  
_ _I wanna tell you how much I love you.  
_ _Do you remember when we met?  
_ _That's the day I knew you were my pet.  
_ _I wanna tell you how much I love you.  
_ _Come with me, my love, to the sea, the sea of love.  
_ _I wanna tell you how much I love you."_

When he glanced down, Dinah had fallen asleep against his chest, one arm clamped on Mr. Otis, the other holding onto Aadar, who'd become a sloth. Jacob curled his arms under her and stood up slowly, careful not to accidentally jostle her awake again. He hummed quietly under his breath as he ascended the stairs to the girls' room, using one foot to nudge the door open. The room was divided down the middle with a yellow line painted on the floor – his idea, after one too many fights about who was responsible for the mess. Rachel was already asleep, curled up with an otter-formed Mahaan snuggled in her arms.

He tucked Dinah into bed, smoothed her hair back, and bent to kiss her forehead. "Goodnight, cricket. Love you," he murmured softly.

Taking care to avoid the squeaking floorboard, he stepped out of the room and eased the door closed, but before he could back away, he heard a drowsy murmur, "Love you more, Jay."


	15. As Kingfishers Catch Fire

"Jacob! Hey, Jacob!"

He looked up at the call of his name, turning on the bench he sat on. "Hey, Cass. What are you doing here?" he asked as she bounded over to him happily, Mel trotting at her heels.

"I went to return some books to Mr. Jenkins, I was heading back home," she answered, leaning against the back of the bench. "What are you doing here? I'd have thought you wouldn't fit on the slide," she said, jerking her chin towards the playground, currently full of laughing, screaming children and their dæmons enjoying a sunny weekend afternoon.

Jacob laughed and moved his jacket so she could sit down next to him; Laghu wriggled out of his shirt pocket and fluttered over to lay on Mel's head, nipping at one ear in greeting. "I don't, but you never outgrow the swings. I'm just waiting for my turn," he answered, nodding towards the swing set where several children were dancing between the swings, pushing their companions and arguing about who went next.

Cassandra giggled as she sat down, tucking her hair back under her knit cap. "God, I haven't been on the swings in years. My parents never took me down here."

"Well, that's a damn shame."

"Really, though, what are you here for? I didn't think this is your scene."

"My sisters. I promised them I'd bring them out here yesterday," Jacob answered.

The redhead blinked at him in surprise, eyebrows raising slightly. "You have sisters?" she said in disbelief, and he realised that he had never told her about his siblings.

"Yeah, I do. Three, but only two of them are actually here. The oldest one's at a friend's birthday party." Jacob scanned the playground for a moment, then pointed to Dinah, swinging across the monkey bars. "Right there, black hair, blue jumper, that's the youngest one, Dinah. And over _there,_ green pants, red shirt, braids, that's Rachel, middle one."

Cassandra shook her head. "Wow. Any brothers?" she asked.

"Nah, just me."

"Where's your dad?" she asked.

"Work." _Bar._

She clasped her hands over her knees and looked out at the playground, for a moment going completely silent. Her hyacinth-blue eyes tracked over the playing children, and again, he saw that flicker pass through her gaze, a ghost of some buried feeling. "What about your parents, Cass?" he asked, leaning back against the bench and stretching both legs out in front of him. "You never told us what they do."

She stiffened and then tried to relax without letting him see, and he knew he had just touched on the nerve of it. "I, uhm…I don't see them a whole lot," she answered. One small hand went out to scratch the side of Mel's neck, dragging her fingertips through coarse, spotted fur. "They travel for work. I stay with my great-uncle, that's his house. He doesn't get out a whole lot, he doesn't like…people, really."

"No brothers, sisters?" he prompted.

"Nope. Just me."

"Cousins?"

She shook her head again, one shoulder lifting and dropping in a halfhearted shrug.

Jacob frowned at the idea of her rattling around in a big old house like that all by herself, with only an antisocial old man for company. Sure, his sisters could be a bigger pain in the ass than hemorrhoids at times, but he couldn't imagine living in the house without the constant clamor of bright piping voices and excited dæmon chatter. Before he could find anything else to say, Dinah came bounding over to him, flushed and panting, Aadar springing at her heels in the form of a cocker spaniel. "Jay!" she exclaimed, her eyes moving to Cassandra, then to Mel, a mischievous little smile on her lips. "Is this your _girlfriend?"_

Heat spilled up his neck into his ears. "Shut it, punk," he replied, nudging her with one foot so she staggered. "This is Cassie, she's a _friend_ of mine, from _school."_

Dinah snickered. She bit her lip and started backing away from the bench, chanting in a singsong voice with Aadar chiming in, "Jay and Cassie, sittin' in a tree…"

"Oh, you're dead now!" Jacob lunged off the bench towards her, and she let out a little scream, turning and running back towards the playset, Aadar fluttering away into a dove form. Shaking his head in exasperation, he resumed his seat. "Little punk."

Cassandra had dissolved into laughter, hunched over to hide her blush even as Mel cackled, nearly dislodging Laghu from the top of her head. "Definitely a little sister," she giggled between hiccups of laughter.

"Pain in the ass, but you learn to love 'em," he answered.

She straightened up, tucking her hair back behind her ears, still grinning. "They call you Jay?" she asked at last.

He tensed a little, then made himself to relax again. "Yeah. Only Dinah really calls me that anymore, though. Rachel and Leah stick to Jake."

"Jake. I've never heard anybody call you Jake. Do you prefer that to Jacob?" Cassandra asked, wrapping an arm around Mel and roughing her dæmon's fur. "All the time we've known each other, I've never thought to ask you that before."

Jacob chewed the inside of his mouth for a moment. "I…when I was little, my mama would call me her Jaybird, and when my sisters were younger, they would call me that, too. Leah and Rachel outgrew it, Dinah still hasn't. Only my family really calls me Jake anymore," he answered.

Cassandra's mouth turned down a little. "Oh."

"But…I wouldn't mind if you did, Cassie," he added.

The miniscule frown disappeared, replaced with a smile. "So, after you wear your sisters out, what are your plans for the day, Mr. Stone? Are you going to head back to the Final Draft?"

Jacob shook his head, looking out at the playground again, eyes tracking Rachel and Dinah instinctively. They were playing what looked like a mix of tag and hide-and-seek with a handful of other kids, dæmons flicking from shape to shape as they chased each other about. "I think so. I was gonna head out, see the sights. I was actually thinking about going to the museums. Have you gone to them before?" he asked. He'd been itching to go for weeks now but had never found the time to, nor the opportunity to get away from his old man to see the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry, see the submarine. Dinah would get a kick out of that. Rachel…probably not so much, but there were other things there she'd like.

"Not for a long time," Cassandra answered.

"Wanna come with me?" he asked even as Laghu nipped at his ear, and he realised that what he said sounded suspiciously like a date. "I mean, with me and my sisters? I was going to take them over, make a day out of it. If you wanted to go."

She glanced up at him with a small, tentative smile and nodded. "Sounds great."

* * *

"I like her, she's nice," Dinah said succinctly, with her usual childish bluntness as Jacob unlocked the front door to the house. They'd said goodbye to Cassandra at the museum, as she had to head into the city to get some shopping done.

"Yeah?" he asked, holding open the door for the girls.

"She's alright," Rachel agreed in a disinterested tone, which was high praise from her. Mahaan had coiled himself around her neck as a garden snake, and he was reminded unpleasantly of Lamia but kept his mouth shut.

"Can she come over again?" Dinah asked as she threw herself on the sofa. She took a small drawstring bag that had the OMSI logo on it out of her pocket and untied the strings, pouring out a handful of brightly coloured stones on the cushion next to her. They were from the museum—as many as could be fit in the bag for three-fifty. Aadar perched on her head in his favourite sugar glider form to watch as she sorted them by colour.

"I'll ask her when I see her in school tomorrow if she'll come over for dinner," he replied, amused. His sisters didn't approve of a single teenager in existence other than him, not even their cousins back in Anais.

"M'kay." Dinah swept the stones back into the bag and went upstairs with them, chattering with Aadar the whole way.

Laghu nipped at his ear gently, and he turned his head. Rachel had curled herself up in a little ball in the recliner with Mahaan still coiled around her, not even looking at the remote even though she was apt to fight him for it. "What's the matter, moose?" he asked.

She didn't protest the hated nickname, and he knew that something was wrong. He crossed the living room and leant against the recliner, standing over her. "Rachel?" Laghu prompted.

She didn't speak, just opened her hand; lying in her palm was a small charm shaped like a dolphin that looked like it came from a bracelet or necklace but had fallen off, scuffed and scratched. He understood then why she all of a sudden seemed so down-spirited. "I found it on the floor, at the museum," she said quietly, closing her hand around the charm. Her eyes filled, but she hastily swiped at them before any tears could fall. "I miss her, Jake. I miss Mama."

"I know, kiddo, I do too," he murmured, reaching around her as best he could with her sitting all curled up, hugging her to his side. For a moment, she was unresponsive, but then she uncoiled and wrapped her arms around his waist, rubbing her face into his shirt so she wouldn't cry. Rachel hated crying. Jacob stroked her hair for a moment, curls springing out from under his hand, but then he patted her back. "C'mon, kiddo. Come with me."

She followed him upstairs to his room, even though she avoided his room like it was unholy ground, and sat on the end of the bed when he told her to. "Now, do _not_ say a _word_ of this to Pop, hear me?" he said firmly, grasping her shoulder in one hand. "Not one word."

Rachel's eyes widened a degree, and she nodded rapidly. Intrigued now, Mahaan uncoiled from her neck and became an otter, peering up at him. Jacob stared at her for another moment to be certain he'd gotten his point across, then opened his closet door. He pushed aside his shirts and jackets and his one and only suit to dig out the box buried in the far back of the closet under his old shoes and the junk boxes that didn't fit in the hall closet, aware of her eyes digging into his back.

"Pop finds out, he's gonna kick our ass," Laghu whispered in his ear, too low for Rachel to hear.

"I know," he replied softly, finally getting his hands on the box and tugging it free. Holding it in both hands, he sat on the bed next to Rachel, took out his pocketknife, and carefully cut through the tape to wriggle the lid off.

She gasped softly when he took off the lid and moved the old shirts he had folded on top of the contents. "That's Mama's stuff," she whispered, hugging Mahaan to her tightly.

"I know. Not a word, remember," Jacob repeated.

After her funeral, Jacob had come home to find Isaac blackout drunk and getting rid of everything of Mama's, throwing all her clothes out of the closet, breaking picture frames, dumping the contents of her jewelry box. The girls had been staying with their grandmother that night, thankfully, and he hadn't even tried getting in the way of the old man's warpath. Instead, he'd saved anything he could from Isaac's grief. There was another box under his bed that held what was left of her crystal collection after Isaac tipped the curio cabinet, secured in bubble wrap. In this one, he had two photo albums, most of her jewelry, her books, her sketchpads, her paintings, and a few of her handmade decorations.

Mama's favourite animal had always been dolphins. That was the first constellation that Jacob ever learnt. He remembered being curled in Mama's lap, sitting on the porch steps of the ranch house as she pointed out Delphinus, Laghu sitting next to Adi on the steps. Aware of Laghu shivering a little against his neck, he opened the small box that held her jewelry and took out a silver ring with two small dolphins on it, framing a tiny piece of polished turquoise. Mama wore it on her little finger, but on Rachel's smaller hand, it fit best on her middle finger. "Hide it from Pop, okay? He's still hurtin' an awful lot," he murmured.

"I know," she whispered, touching the ring. All at once, she turned and flung her arms around him, and he nearly lost his grip on the box. "Thank you, Jake."

"Anytime, moose."

"I hate that nickname," she mumbled in his neck.

"Yeah, I know."

She lowered her arms and looked back in the box at Mama's books, tracing her fingers over the creased, well-read spines. "Gerard Manley Hopkins. Who's that?"

"A poet. She used to read some of his stuff to me. To you, too, when you were a baby. Don't know if you remember," Jacob said quietly, stroking her curls again.

"Kinda. There was one I really liked…one about a bird? A fisher?"

He smiled. "A kingfisher?"

Rachel nodded and looked up at him. "Do you know…?"

Jacob curled an arm over her shoulder and rested his chin atop her head as he recited the poem, Laghu burrowed into Mahaan's fur.

 _"_ _As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies dráw flame;  
_ _As tumbled over rim in roundy wells  
_ _Stones ring; like each tucked string tells, each hung bell's  
_ _Bow swung finds tongue to fling out broad its name;  
_ _Each mortal thing does one thing and the same:  
_ _Deals out that being indoors each one dwells;  
_ _Selves—goes itself; myself it speaks and spells,  
_ _Crying_ Whát I do is me: for that I came.

 _Í say móre: the just man justices;  
_ _Kéeps gráce: thát keeps all his goings graces;  
_ _Acts in God's eye what in God's eye he is—  
_ _Chríst—for Christ plays in ten thousand places,  
_ _Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his  
_ _To the Father through the features of men's faces."_

Rachel looked down into the box again. "Can I read it?"

He took the book out and handed it to her. "The binding's old. Be careful with it…dragonfly."

"That one's better," Mahaan mumbled quietly.

Laghu chortled and combed his tiny needle teeth through the otter's thick, oily fur behind one small ear. "You got it."


	16. As Right As a Wrong

Monday was, naturally, a soggy, cloudy, rainy all-around miserable day and a perfect way to start a school day, of course. By the time Jacob got to the school, his jeans were soaked up to the knee because an asshole drove through a puddle and splashed him when he crossed the street, and even his heaviest jacket was nearly soaked through. He was really going to talk to the old man about getting his own vehicle soon. Everybody was huddled under the awnings and breezeways, for once eagerly waiting for the bell to ring to begin class. He was sweeping the crowds for a familiar head of red hair, but before he even got close, Estrella had materialised out of the crowds, wearing a black raincoat with an unhappy Astro clutched inside. "Jacob. Jacob, there you are. Listen…I'm sorry about this weekend. I'm so sorry. My brother's an insensitive _culo_ on his better days, but when he's drunk, I…" She shook her head, the damp ends of her hair trailing out from under her hood. "Are you all right? I'd have called but didn't it was something to talk about on the phone."

Jacob nodded, hands in his pockets. "Yeah, I'm okay. I'm sorry if I crashed the party or anything—"

She hastily waved a hand to brush him off. _"No, no te disculpes, amigo. No fue tu culpa. Mi hermano es un idiota. ¿Estamos bien?"_

"Yeah. Yeah, _estamos bien."_

 _"_ _Fantastico."_ She reached out and clapped him on the shoulder. "His stupid ass is back at the community college, so…if you want to come over again, don't hesitate to ask. Bring your friends if you want."

Jacob found a smile and meant it. "You got it. I'll…I'll call or something."

The bell rang, and she threw him a bright grin just before she vanished into the shifting masses, everyone pressing in closer as they all tried to stay under the breezeway out of the rain.

"Guess we'll wait to see Cassie and Jones in Mad-Dog's class," Laghu lamented quietly from where he'd tucked himself inside Jacob's hood, well away from the rain, and he nodded agreement as they walked to first hour, trying not to slip as the tile hallways became slipping hazards.

Thankfully, though, there were no unpleasant surprises in his locker when he passed it.

* * *

Cassandra turned in her desk and leant towards him, and Jacob leant forward as well; Laghu perched atop his head to watch the door for Mad-Dog. "Listen, you want to come over to my place tonight?" she asked in a low voice.

"Yeah, sure, why?"

"I was thinking we could study for quarter finals, bring over the rest of the gang," she replied, pitching her voice low so nobody could overhear them.

"You sure you want to bring Jones over? I'm not sure he's housebroken."

Mel snickered loudly. "We'll put him outside if he makes a mess," she replied.

"You could stay the night if you want, too," Cassandra offered, a smile on her face as ruffled her dæmon's ears playfully.

His brow furrowed, staring at the redhead. "I'm not gonna break, Cass," he said quietly, a quiet simmer of anger tightening his shoulders when he was suddenly struck with the idea that she was pitying him or something, thinking he couldn't be by himself. He was a big boy and didn't need his hand held.

She blinked at him with wide eyes. "What? No, I know that. I wasn't…Jake, I just…" One hand drifted down to Mel's head once more, a nervous gesture on her part. Some people fiddled with their hair, some people reached for their dæmons. "I just want you to know that I'm your friend…and I don't mind if you want to talk. Or not. So…crash-study night at my place. Coming?" she asked again.

He let the tension go and inwardly scolded himself for thinking that way. She hadn't treated him like he was fragile since the day they met, and it wasn't likely to change now. "Yeah, sure. Thanks, Cass. Sorry for—"

She waved a hand. "Forget about it."

They both immediately straightened up when the tardy bell shrilled; just as the tone rang out, Ezekiel came skidding into the classroom, nearly falling over as he rounded a row of desks and launched into his seat. No sooner than his ass had touched the seat than Mad-Dog Morgan walked in and shut the door behind her, the latch on the torture chamber securing with a conspicuously loud _clack_ that almost echoed in the abrupt silence.

"One day, you're not going to make it, and she's going to skin you alive," Jacob hissed under his breath, leaning forward to speak in Ezekiel's ear.

"And today is not that day," Ezekiel replied just a touch breathlessly, holding up a hand for a high-five, which Aur provided.

"Punk."

"Hick."

* * *

It started raining again not long after school let out; Isaac had consented to him staying the night at Cassandra's place and taking the bus in the morning, but the old man wouldn't give him a ride. Since he didn't have money to shell out for a cab, he ended up walking, and by the time he reached the huge old house, he was freezing and soaked half to the bone. Jacob knocked on the door, but it was Eve who answered the door, wearing sweats and a ratty hoodie. "My brother from another mother," she laughed, stepping back to let him inside. "You look like a drowned rat."

"Gee, thanks, so much. Y'know, if we want to talk about someone's looks, you put your hood up, you'll look like Eminem in _8 Mile,_ Slim Shady," he shot back as he stepped into the mud room, toeing off his boots on the mat to the sound of her laughter. He was already dripping a small puddle onto the floor and was quietly despairing walking through the house like this.

As if reading his mind, Eve produced a folded stack of fabric, still sniggering. "Cassandra's got spare clothes and towels to go around. It'll probably fit you, stuff's big on me," she said. "Bathroom's right here on the right, and the party's in the basement."

"Party? Eve, if you think studying's a party, you need to get out more," he laughed, taking the clothes and throwing the towel around his shoulders. It felt warm, like it'd been sitting on a heater or just been pulled out of the dryer.

She smirked. "I know. You should see me when I really go wild."

He went to the bathroom, changing out of his wet clothes. The sweatpants and t-shirt both fit, and when he stepped out, Cassandra had joined Eve in the hallway. "Oh, good, it fits," she remarked. "I wear stuff like that as jammies, but I wasn't sure if it'd fit you. C'mon, we'll throw the wet stuff in the dryer."

"Thanks, Cass. Hey, didn't you say you lived with your uncle?" Jacob mused, looking around the empty house.

"Great-uncle. He's upstairs and takes out his hearing aids around seven. We're in the clear," she replied lightly, and he followed the girls down the hallway. Cassandra pointed into a small utility room at the end of the hall, and he pitched his clothes into the dryer on top of the wet mass that was probably everyone else's clothes. She started it up, then opened a side door that opened to a staircase leading down; he could hear Ezekiel and Flynn arguing over something.

Jacob whistled softly when he went down the stairs into the basement. "You've got your own little Batcave going down here, Cassandra. I'm jealous." There was furniture—an easy chair, a chaise sofa, and three beanbag chairs centered around a low table already stacked with pizza boxes, textbooks, and notebooks, a flatscreen TV, and at least three bookcases lined the wall, all full. Ezekiel and Flynn were sitting in two of the beanbag chairs, arguing with each other past mouthfuls of pizza.

"The Sorting Hat doesn't lie—" Ezekiel was protesting.

"People are _dying,_ Jones, don't even try to pull that—"

Jacob blinked. "Harry Potter? Are they arguing about Harry Potter?"

Eve nodded as Paznic shook his head in obvious disappointment. "And whether or not he really belonged in Slytherin. It's been going on for twenty minutes," she replied, then clapped her hands together loudly. "Boys, boys, you're both pretty. C'mon, Jacob's here, let's study material we're actually going to be quizzed on."

Jacob laughed at the affronted looks on both their faces; the two exchanged a glance that clearly said their discussion wasn't over. "Take a slice and pull up a beanbag, cowboy. We've got pepperoni and supreme," Ezekiel said, gesturing to the table. "Not to mention all subjects of mind-numbing schoolwork ready to be crammed into our unwilling brains."

"Awesome." He sat down on the sofa and put two slices on a plate.

"There's drinks in the fridge if you're thirsty," Cassandra offered as she dropped onto the seat next to him, crossing her legs on the cushion, and he noticed that there was a fridge in the corner under the staircase. She grabbed her binder and set it on her lap. "Okay, ladies and gentlefrogs. Let's get started," she declared.

Jacob opened his notebook with his free hand; Laghu settled himself on Mel's head between her ears, already preparing for a night of memorization.

It ended up only being about an hour.

It'd been Eve who raised the white flag first, which honestly surprised him; he was expecting it to be Ezekiel. Nope. The blonde pitched her notebook and declared defeat with a succinct, "Fuck this, who's up for a movie night instead?" Which was how they all ended up shutting off all the lights and turning on _The Lord of the Rings,_ sandwiched together on the chaise sofa, as it was directly across from the TV. Ezekiel ended up in the middle between Eve and Jacob, commandeering the enormous mixing bowl full of popcorn. Flynn, unsurprisingly, made himself good and cozy beside Eve, and Cassandra sat on Jake's other side. Aur and Laghu both joined Mel on the easy chair, curling up on her broad, warm back to see; Paznic took one of the beanbag seats, with Koyi winging over to perch in the dip between his shoulders.

Flynn tapped out before they were halfway through the _Fellowship,_ slumping over to start snoring on Eve's shoulder, maybe drooling a little, too. Jacob watched from the corner of his eye, but the blonde didn't shove him off, just rolled her eyes and moved her arm before he pinned it completely. He smirked.

Ezekiel lost the battle with Morpheus halfway through the _Two Towers,_ and Jacob had to pry the bowl out of the punk's hands to set on the table so they didn't wake up covered in popcorn. Eve had fallen asleep, too, her cheek resting against the top of Flynn's flyaway hair. Jacob had a fuzzy memory of the first few minutes of _Return of the King,_ but then he was out, too, Cassandra having fallen asleep on his shoulder some time before that.

He didn't dream of flooding waters or breaking glass once.

* * *

Jacob woke up to the smell of vanilla filling his nose and a warm weight covering his thighs. He opened his eyes groggily to feathery black hair and realised in a slow, fuzzy way that it was Ezekiel, slumped over on his shoulder. He closed his eyes for a moment and breathed in the smell of baking vanilla before realising that it was _Ezekiel,_ and he quickly sat up before anybody could see that he was smelling the punk's hair. Even though it so was _not_ fair that the punk-ass smelled like vanilla, like cookies, something good enough to eat. Cassandra was lying on his lap, her red hair spilling over his thighs in a silken fan.

He glanced at the other end of the couch and had to bite his tongue to keep from laughing out loud. Flynn had better pray he woke up before Eve did, because at some point, the geek had rolled closer to her and was wrapped around her like kudzu on a telephone pole, his nose practically in Eve's cleavage.

Gradually coming more awake, he became aware of a few things, like the fact that his arm was practically dead asleep from Ezekiel's heavy head on his shoulder, there was an ache in his ribs where the punk's arm was pressed right up against his bruises, and he really needed to use the bathroom. Which was kind of impossible given the redhead currently using his lap as her pillow.

"Cass," he mumbled, loathe to wake her but having no other option. He lifted the hand he could actually feel and brushed her hair back from her face, fingertips brushing her cheek, flushed with sleep. "Cassie," he repeated a little louder, grasping her shoulder to give her a light shake.

Fine rust-coloured lashes fluttered, and she made a soft, drowsy noise of protest, turning over. Jacob exhaled softly at the sight she made, all peaches and cream and red hair against the dark fabric of his borrowed sweatpants, the flush that darkened in her face when she realised where and who she was lying on, his chest tightening with an unexpected rush of emotion.

"Oh, sorry," Cassandra said, sitting up. "Didn't mean to turn you into a pillow."

"It's fine," he replied and tried to subtly stretch his legs, wriggling his toes to get the blood going. She brought her hair over her shoulder and combed her fingers through it, trying to sort the curls into some semblance of order; with her hair gathered like that, the neck of her too-big t-shirt falling off one pale shoulder, he couldn't help but think of Renoir and Sandys, and quickly glanced away before she caught him staring. He shifted Ezekiel off his shoulder less gently than he'd woken Cassandra and stood up, scooping up Laghu from the easy chair. He grabbed his bag from the floor and went upstairs, retracing his steps from last night to find the bathroom.

By the time he'd used the bathroom, brushed his teeth, changed, retrieved the other ones from the dryer, and headed back downstairs to the basement, everyone else had woken up. For the most part anyways—Ezekiel was lying face-down on the sofa and making zombie-like noises of protest, Aur sprawled out in fair imitation on his back. Flynn must have woken up before Eve because the blonde was sitting up and stretching like nothing untoward had happened, but the geek was looking anywhere but at her, blushing four different shades of red.

"C'mon, Zeke, quit whining. I'll make coffee," Cassandra coaxed, patting the Australian teen's back. "I've got a Keurig."

Ezekiel's head came up immediately. "Really?"

She laughed. "Yes. I also have cinnamon bagels if anyone wants one."

As they all traipsed upstairs into the sleek and shiny modernized kitchen, Jacob noticed that whilst the basement had a homey, lived-in feel to it, the rest of the house was rather cool and still, like it was a showpiece instead of a home that actually had people in it. The windows were all draped with heavy curtains, and the walls were all painted a dark brown colour that matched the hardwood flooring. There were no photos on the walls, just a few paintings that he knew were very expensive originals; the only trace of a personal touch anywhere was a framed photograph on one of the bookcases in the living room—it showed a dark-haired man and an auburn-haired woman standing against a vague grey backdrop, with a little girl in a navy dress standing in front of them, red hair in a braid. Had to be Cassandra and her parents.

"Where's your great-uncle?" Eve asked, having jumped up to sit on the kitchen island; she had slathered a bagel in cream cheese and was polishing it off at impressive speed. "He's not going to question the teenagers raiding the kitchen?"

Cassandra shrugged. "He isn't up before nine, and until he puts in his hearing aids, he's stone-cold deaf. We won't wake him up or anything," she replied with the ease of long-fact. "Bus doesn't get here for another twenty minutes, so you might wanna make sure you got all your stuff."

Jacob was only listening to their words with half an ear, staring out the kitchen window into the backyard. The rain had stopped, but in its place, a thick, soupy fog had moved in, draping outside in a grey shroud. He could still see the shape of the carriage house, though, looming in the fog, and a large, stately oak tree that towered over it, the vivid red autumnal leaves still visible, spatters of blood growing around the base of the trunk in bright spurts. An idea tickled the inside of his skull.

Laghu giggled beside his ear, and he smiled, lifting a hand to run a finger over his dæmon's back.

* * *

"Guys, guys, guys," Flynn babbled in a rush as he hustled over to their table at lunch, Koyi almost doing loops. Eve had to catch him by the scruff of the neck and heave him upright when his foot caught on the chair and he nearly ate floor.

"Slow down, Speedy Gonzales," the blonde snorted. "Use your words like a big boy. Deep breath."

Obediently, he took a deep breath and visible settled himself before speaking again. "Just before the bell rang, Lamia came into the office to see the nurse. She had this rash all over her hands going up her arms, and the nurse said that she had to go home and see a doctor before she could come back to school in case she was contagious. She was so _pissed,_ man, I was afraid to be in the same room."

"Whoa. Did the nurse not know what it was?" Ezekiel asked, sitting forward in his chair with interest sparking in his eyes.

"She said she wasn't sure, and since Lamia's not allergic to anything, it has to be an infection or something," Flynn replied gleefully. He was almost bouncing in his chair.

Jacob grinned down at his sandwich, trying to hide the expression with another bite of turkey and rye; however, Cassandra, sitting right beside him, noticed anyways and nudged his side. "What's that look?" she asked.

"What look?" he asked innocently.

"That one." She pointed at him. "That's your 'ha-ha, I got you' face. I know that face."

Instead of answering, Jacob leant over and pulled a book out of his bag, setting it on the table between their trays: _Reader's Digest_ _North American Wildlife._ Aware that the others were now looking at him in interest, he opened the book to where he'd stuck a bright pink Post-It bookmark to the page.

Cassandra slid the book closer to her and read the passage he'd stuck the Post-It on, eyes flitting over the passage before turning back to him, wide and disbelieving. He winked and opened his bag to let her see the contents. All at once, she began laughing, Mel joining in gleefully. She laughed so hard that tears slipped out the corners of her eyes, and she clutched at her ribs, sitting back in her chair.

"What is it? What is it?" Eve demanded. "What's so funny?"

 _"_ _Toxicodendron diversiloba,"_ Jacob said.

Ezekiel blinked. "The fuck's that?" he asked, baffled.

 _"_ _Toxicodendron diversiloba?_ Wait, that's the scientific name of…" Flynn trailed off, his eyes widening a degree and his mouth falling open slightly.

Jacob reached into his bag, pulled out a Ziploc bag full of reddish-gold leaves and twigs, and set it on top of the wildlife guide. "It's my forestry class homework," he informed them innocently when three pairs of wide eyes turned back up to his face. For a moment, they were quiet, and then they were all laughing loud enough to get strange looks from the neighbouring tables.

When they got their mirth back under control, Jacob put the wildlife guide back in his bag, right next to the Ziploc bag that held the poison oak cuttings he'd taken from Cassandra's backyard, which he may or may not have accidentally rubbed against Lamia's locker door that morning.

And on the inside of her car.

Maybe she would rethink leaving it unlocked next time.

* * *

 **A/N: in case anyone's wondering, the paintings Jacob was thinking about when looking at Cassandra are Renoir's _Young Girl Combing Her Hair_ and Sandys's _Helen of Troy._**


	17. Gates of Pearl and Tinsel Dreams

December arrived in the blink of an eye.

It was like some strange time-warp. It seemed like on Monday he was helping the girls pick out costumes for Halloween—Leah was Red Riding Hood, Daya becoming the Big Bad Wolf; Rachel was a witch, Mahaan her black cat familiar; and Dinah decided to be Samson, with her hair in seven braids and Aadar as a lion—and on Tuesday he was pulling down the ladder to the attic and digging out the plastic bins of Christmas decorations.

It would be their first real Christmas without Mama. Last Christmas didn't really count since it was not long after Mama's funeral and they were all numb to everything except their own grief and aching, packing everything up for the move to Portland. But this year, they had no reason not to celebrate.

When he pried up the lid of the first bin and found himself looking at the boxes of delicate, rose-pink ornaments, Jacob sat down on the dusty floor of the attic and cried for a good thirty minutes, hugging his knees to his chest, Laghu burrowed into his neck and murmuring nonsense to try and soothe him. He bit down on the fabric of his sleeve to muffle any noises he might've made, rocking back and forth to the aching in his heart; when it finally abated, he dried his face and grabbed the bins, carefully carrying them downstairs, maybe not feeling better, but a little lighter.

Mama never decorated the tree in traditional Christmas red and green. She said there was entirely too much of it around as it was, so she collected ornaments pink and gold instead. Not glaringly pink, but a soft, rosy hue, the faint blush on a pearl. And she always found ones that were real glass, not those cheap plastic ones that the paint always flaked off of. There were also a handful of pearly white ornaments and clear crystal ones to break it up a little. Instead of tinsel or garland, she'd put ribbons on the tree, arranging them like the long streamers at the top of a maypole, wound on two big spools. One was sheer pink with gold leaves, the other was golden with white starbursts.

There were five ornaments, however, which he left in the tissue-packed shoebox they were in—angels, hand-carved of white yew with real feathers fixed on the backs for wings, each 'holding' a gemstone in their cupped hands: the birthstones of his mother, himself, and his sisters. His was set with a pearl; Leah's, a ruby; Rachel's, a sapphire; Dinah's, an opal; and Mama's, an aquamarine. Grandfather made each one the year they were born. Pop never got one. He didn't want to risk putting them out and having the old man's temper get the better of him, even though the girls always loved hanging up their own angels. Maybe he'd put a little tree up in his room and hang them there.

Since he'd already taken the quarter finals and the last few days were just filler until Christmas break, he cut school and stayed home putting up the tree to surprise the girls when they got home. Jacob put on his mp3, turned up the tunes, and tried to ignore the aching in his chest as he worked. They had a big, pre-lit tree, but he wound extra strands of white fairy lights around it since the pre-lit ones never had enough for his liking. Once he'd fixed the ribbons to the top of the tree and arranged them just so, he started opening the boxes of ornaments. Laghu fluttered around the living room, pointed out where to put them for the best effect, and ordered Jacob to move a few that were hung in the wrong place.

Laghu fluttered over and tugged on the cord of his headphones, pulling it out of his ear. "Phone," his dæmon squeaked at him.

He stepped down off the footstool and picked up his mobile from the coffee table where it was buzzing insistently—Cassandra. "Hey, Cassie," he greeted happily, sliding his finger across the screen.

 _"Merry Christmas, Jake!"_ she chirped in his ear, slightly fuzzy over the line, like it was windy or she had bad reception. _"What are you doing? You don't usually cut school, even for a half-day."_

"Merry Christmas to you, too, and I'm decorating the tree. Gonna surprise my sisters when they get home. What are you doing, other than cutting school as well?" he asked.

 _"Nothing, just on my way home now. Skipped out after Mad-Dog's daily torture session with Ezekiel. Thought I'd call and ask why you were truant today."_

Jacob thought about the little box he had wrapped, carefully stored upstairs in his room, and how Dinah asked if Cassandra could come over at least once a week. He shifted his weight, picking at the ornament hook he was holding in his free hand. "Would you, uhm…would you like to come over for dinner? Tonight? The girls have been asking. We're having lasagna," he added.

There was a pause on other end of the line, and he was starting to kick himself mentally when Cassandra's small voice replied, _"Yeah. Yeah, that…that sounds good. Lasagna, huh?"_

Laghu exhaled softly in his ear. "Yeah, lasagna. And none of that frozen store-bought shit, either. Making it myself," he replied.

 _"Really? That sounds good. When should I come over?"_

"Uhm…well, whenever you want. My old man's not going to be home until late tonight."

 _"Okay. I just have to swing home real quick and check with my great-uncle first, so…see you in, like, forty minutes?"_

"Sure. Forty minutes. See you then, Cassie."

 _"Okay. Bye, Jake."_

"Bye." He set down his mobile on the table and exhaled slowly, a flush of warmth pushing out that dull ache in his chest. Jacob reached up to rub his fingers over Laghu's back, smiling as he turned back to the tree.

He was finding spots for the last ornaments when someone knocked 'Shave and a Haircut' on the front door. "Come in, Cass, it's unlocked," he called.

"Hey, Jake," she greeted as the door opened, then shut. There was a small pause, and then he heard her exhale softly, "Wow." He turned around on the footstool to see her standing with a hand on Mel's head, staring at the tree. She was wearing a full-skirted red dress and green-and-white striped stockings, tiny candy canes on her earrings. "That looks…amazing. These are beautiful." She stepped around the sofa and came up beside the tree, touching one of the ornaments with a fingertip. "Glass?"

"Yep. Mama hated the plastic ones." He straightened out the star and stepped down off the stool, backing up a step to survey his handiwork. "What d'you think?"

"It's beautiful. I think your sisters will love it." She cast him a sideways glance and added gently, "I think your mom would be proud."

Jacob swallowed and nodded; Laghu nibbled his ear. "Yeah, I think so, too."

Cassandra turned back to look at the bins of decorations set around the living room, Mel poking her snout in them curiously. "So, can we help?" she asked.

Grateful to think of something else, Jacob nodded. "Yeah, sure. Uhm…ah, here." He picked up a coil of white fairy lights. "You wanna put these on the staircase?" he asked, and she took the lights from him. He unwound a long banner of garland to hang around the kitchen archway, securing it in place with bits of tape and sticky putty. "So, what are you doing for Christmas, Cassie? Your parents coming home from…wherever?" he asked as he stood on his tiptoes to reach the top of the archway. Damn, what he wouldn't give for just another two inches, one more little growth spurt.

"New York, and uhm…no, no, they're not," she replied as she sat on the steps, winding the fairy lights around the balusters, inching down step by step, looping over the handrail to keep them from slipping.

Laghu fluttered over and hung upside-down from one of the strands, staring at Mel. "Your parents aren't coming home on Christmas?" he asked in disbelief.

The hyena huffed and shifted her weight on the step, making it creak. "No. They have work planned, and they don't let a 'material and frivolous' thing like Christmas put the brakes on," she replied, the words falling out with a well-recited smoothness, then shrugged her muscular spotted shoulders. "They'll call. Maybe."

"What about your great-uncle?" Laghu asked.

Mel shrugged again. "To him, it just means he got through another year without dying. Sometimes I'm not sure that's a good thing or not."

Jacob paused in hanging a handful of tiny ornaments from the garland to turn around to look at the redhead. "Cassie. You are _not_ going to sit in that big-ass house all by yourself on Christmas," he said, and only got another little shrug in reply. "Are you kidding me? That's…"

"Jake, please don't make a big deal out of it," Cassandra pleaded.

"Cassie, it's _Christmas._ It's the one day a year you're _supposed_ to be with your family, work or no."

 _"Jake,"_ she repeated, slightly louder, more insistent.

Words poised on the tip of his tongue, but Laghu cast him a sharp wave of warning to swallow them back. Looking at her, he saw that she was pointedly giving her attention to winding the lights around a baluster, refusing to look at him, and he knew that this was a sore spot for her, a raw nerve that she'd put effort into constructing a disaffected wall over. She hadn't pushed on his walls when she ran into them, he didn't have the right to go chipping at hers. He let the subject drop.

"When do your sisters get home?" Cassandra asked as she reached the bottom of the stairs, coiling the end of the strand around the newel post and connecting them to the outlet.

"Eh, they're at the end of the bus route, so…probably around three thirty," he answered, unfolding their stockings and hanging them from the lights on the railing. Each one had their names written on them in Glitter Glue, alternating between silver and gold.

"When do you guys usually eat dinner?" she asked.

"Five, half past. Usually I make them do their homework and all that first."

Cassandra let out a soft exclamation from behind him, and he turned around. She'd wandered back over to the bins and had found the box with the angels; she was holding Dinah's in her hands, gently running her fingers over the silken edges of the feathers that formed the wings. Grandfather used to go game hunting, and he used the stiff flight feathers from a snow goose. "Where'd you get these?" she asked.

"My grandfather made 'em," he replied, and her eyes widened a degree, gently setting the angel back on the tissue wrapping where she'd picked it up. "One for each of us. He gave them to Mama on Christmas the year each of us were born. See, they all have our birthstones. That's Dinah's. Opal for October."

"There's only five," Mel pointed out, leaning over to sniff at the box.

He smirked. "Mama was always my grandfather's baby girl, and…well, he never liked Pop very much." He touched the edge of a feather. "That's hers. Aquamarine. She always loved the ocean."

"Aren't you going to hang them up?"

Saying no would undoubtedly lead to a 'why' and he didn't want to explain that the odds were good that if the old man got blackout drunk, he might very well chuck them in the fireplace. "They go on last. We each hang up our own," he lied instead, reaching up to run a fingertip over Laghu's back.

"Got it. So, are you going to show me how to make a lasagna from scratch, Mr. Fresh-Never-Frozen?" Cassandra asked.

He opened his mouth to reply, but they both turned towards the door at the sound of someone knocking. "You expecting company?" Cassandra mused.

"Just you," he replied in confusion, glancing at his watch. Too early for school to be out, and they wouldn't knock on their own door anyways.

His confusion dissipated, however, when a familiar Australian drawl came through the door after another insistent knocking. "Let me in, cowboy, I'm freezing my bits off out here!" Ezekiel called plaintively.

"Oh, for God's sake." Jacob went to let the punk in to the sound of Cassandra's laughter behind him. Ezekiel was huddled on the step in layers of fabric with Aur tucked inside them, only a sullen dark face poking out from beneath an incredibly long scarf. _"Why_ are you here?"

Ezekiel side-stepped Jacob without waiting for an invitation to come in and started stamping his feet on the mat, knocking some of the slush off his boots. "Hello, Ezekiel. Why don't you come inside, Ezekiel. Nice to see you, Ezekiel," he muttered sarcastically as he shucked off his heavy jacket and unwound the long, colourful scarf that Aur was hiding inside, his fur standing up from static. He yanked off his hat last, and his dark hair stood up just the same way.

"Come in, Ezekiel. Make yourself at home, Ezekiel. I don't recall inviting you over, Ezekiel," Jacob replied in the same mocking tone.

Ezekiel straightened up from taking off his boots and looked between Jacob and Cassandra with a look of perfect wide-eyed innocence. "This isn't the meeting of Truant Students' Club?" he asked.

"Very funny."

Ezekiel's dark eyes slid sideways past Cassandra. "Nice tree, cowboy. I like the colours," he said. "Never pegged you as a pink kind of bloke."

"My mother's," Jacob answered. "She always said there's enough green and red in Christmas as it is."

Aur snickered and bounded up to perch on the newel post. "True enough," the dæmon agreed, straightening out a crooked band of fairy lights. "Anything else we could do to help?" he asked.

Jacob arched his eyebrows at the punk. "You want to help me decorate?"

Ezekiel shrugged. "Eh, why not? I've always liked Christmas. All this expensive stuff, easily marked with bright paper and shiny ribbons," he remarked, reaching out to flick a piece of tinsel hanging from the end of the garland Jacob had strung up over the front door.

"Come near our presents, Jones, I'll hog-tie you with tinsel and put you out in the snow," Jacob threatened. They weren't under the tree yet—he still had them squirrelled away in the attic under a drop cloth, well away from peeking eyes and grabby little hands—but he wouldn't put it past the punk-ass to start shaking boxes. "Here. These go on the end table over there," he ordered, handing Ezekiel a bundle of bubble wrap that held glass Nativity figurines.

In short order, they had the whole house decorated, and there was still plenty of time before his sisters got home, too. Jacob had to admit that the place looked just as nice as the ranch house. Laghu snuggled down into the hollow of his collarbone, gently scratching sharp little teeth on his skin to soothe that ache in his chest. Almost a year, and the pain had dulled down in minute degrees, but they were all inching back up on him now. He'd never spent a single Christmas without his mother before.

A small, warm hand touched his arm, and he glanced over at Cassandra. She was giving him a knowing look, Mel gazing up at Laghu with dark eyes. "Thanks for all your help, Cassie," he murmured, wrapping an arm around her shoulders. "And you, too, punk," he added after a moment, reaching out to lightly swat Ezekiel on the arm.

"You're welcome," Ezekiel replied with a small grin.

Jacob glanced over at the little smart-ass and heaved a deep sigh. Mama raised a gentleman, Mama raised a gentleman. "You wanna stay for dinner, Jones? I'm making lasagna," he offered. Cassandra squeezed his arm gently, and he knew he'd made the right choice.

A brief look of surprise flickered across Ezekiel's face, there and gone in a second's time, but then he covered it up with another of his broad grins. "Why, I'd be delighted, cowboy."

Just like he'd hoped, the girls had been over the moon when they got home to see the house decorated and the tree up. Dinah had practically done flips when she saw that Cassandra was over for dinner, and even Rachel looked happy to see the redhead again. What worried Jacob more, though, was the fact that Leah was incapable of looking at Ezekiel without blushing, Daya ruffling his fur whenever Aur looked his way. _Please, Lord, don't let my sister develop a crush on that smart-ass. Anyone else, please,_ he prayed to himself once he'd banished the girls to the living room to finish their homework while he started dinner.

"Wait, so you…you actually make lasagna from scratch?"

Jacob looked up at Ezekiel. The punk was leaning up against the counter next to Cassandra, watching him as he took out all the ingredients for dinner, setting everything out. "Yes, I do, Jones. Why?" he asked, turning back his sleeves.

"Didn't realise anybody actually did that anymore. Other than grandmas, I mean."

"Your mother's never made a lasagna? Or dinner at all?"

Ezekiel snorted. "Please. The only woman making dinner in our house is Mrs. Stouffer."

Laghu snickered in his ear, and Jacob rolled his eyes. "Right. Well, my mama didn't like store-bought stuff. All those preservatives and stuff, she said it made her nervous," he replied.

Ezekiel hummed quietly but didn't say anything else, watching Jacob work with surprising attentiveness, Aur perched on one shoulder. Cassandra looked ready to offer help, but she just leant against the counter and watched him as well, Mel's dark eyes peeping over the edge of the counter beside her elbow. He wondered if it was really so strange for them to see someone actually making dinner instead of just warming it up, or if it was just because he was a teenage boy making dinner for his family.

"Does your father cook?" Cassandra asked once he'd put the lasagna in the oven and set the timer.

"He burns," Jacob replied flippantly. "Makes sure that the smoke alarms work at any rate."

Laghu stretched his wings imperiously, fluttering over to land on Mel's head. "He could never cook. Dogs wouldn't even eat the crap he made."

"I'm pretty sure the possums wouldn't eat that stuff," Jacob muttered under his breath.

Once dinner was done, Jacob set aside a plate for Isaac, covering it with Saran wrap and putting it in the fridge, then called the girls in to eat. Dinah happily chattered away to Cassandra about going to the museum or maybe one of the gardens next time, and it made Jacob smile, seeing how Cassandra amicably kept up the conversation. Leah talked mostly to Ezekiel, asking him about the high school and what the teachers were like; Jacob quietly repeated his prayer of _anyone else, please, Lord, let her crush on_ anyone _else, I'm begging you here_ the entire time. The first time Ezekiel noticed Leah blushing his way, though, he at least tried to dial back on the clever remarks and grins, so he was grateful for that.

Not long after dinner, Cassandra announced that she had to leave, and Jacob insisted on calling a cab for her, since it'd gotten way colder in the past few hours, and he didn't like the idea of her walking by herself in the dark and cold. She tried to argue, but he noticed that Mel's stubby tail was flicking the entire time, so he imagined she was at least a little flattered. Maybe.

"I'm glad you came over today," he remarked as they sat on the bottom step of the stairs, watching through the front window for the cab.

"Me, too. You make great lasagna," she replied, hugging her stripy knees, and Mel nodded her large, heavy head in agreement. Laghu perched between her ears like a strange, fuzzy hat, a spot of near-black in her rough brown fur. Cassandra looked over at the Christmas tree. The girls had plugged in all the fairy lights once it got dark, so the tree and the staircase were both lit up with a sparkling white glow. "It really does look beautiful in here." She hooked her arm through his and squeezed his elbow. "Your mom would be proud."

He smiled a little and nodded, resting his hand over her wrist.

A horn honked outside.

"There's your ride," he muttered, reluctantly freeing his arm and standing up, giving Cassandra a hand up; Laghu fluttered back to land on his collar, tucked against his neck.

A burst of laughter made them both glance back into the kitchen, and Jacob huffed a soft laugh of surprise. Dinah was sitting on Ezekiel's knee, and Aadar had turned himself into a tamarin to mimic Aur, granted smaller and not quite as brilliantly golden. The punk had somehow endeared himself to even the oft-prickly Rachel with tales of his own siblings, also all girls, except they were all older than him and apparently more prone to picking on him. "You lot are lucky, okay? Trust me. My sister Mercy, she's taller than your brother and not nearly as nice. Or as pretty. She's got bigger shoulders than him, too," he added, holding up both hands beside his shoulders for emphasis.

"How about that?" Laghu murmured in his ear.

Cassandra smiled and laughed, "It's like he always says: Ezekiel Jones has a way with the ladies."

"Sure he does, just in the under-twelve population," he added with a smirk, and she giggled. He noticed that Leah was blushing again and the smirk faded a touch. Yeah, he'd need to correct that; he repeated his earlier prayer once more. "Bye, Cassie. Thanks for helping today. I'll see you tomorrow at school."

"You're welcome, and thanks for dinner. See you tomorrow." She stood on her toes to hug him, and he pressed his face against her scarf and inhaled the scent of strawberries, trying to hold the sweet smell in his lungs for as long as possible. Laghu nipped at his ear before he could hold on for too long and make it awkward, and he lowered his arms, easing back a little, though he _really_ didn't want to.

She gave him a little wave as she skipped out of the door.

He watched until she got in the cab and drove off before closing the door. Jacob stuck his head into the kitchen. Ezekiel was showing Dinah the trick to walking a fifty-cent piece over his knuckles, making it vanish into his hands only to pull it seemingly out of her hair. "Jones, c'mere a moment, I wanna talk to you," he called.

"Sure. Here, you keep trying," Ezekiel encouraged, handing Dinah the coin once she'd shifted off his lap.

Jacob took his arm and guided him a few steps away from the kitchen to be sure that none of the girls would be eavesdropping. "Listen, I have an idea, and I'm going to need your help," he said in a lowered voice.

"I thought we were saving the nefarious scheming until New Year's. Season of goodwill an' all that," Aur noted, springing over to perch on the newel post at the bottom of the stairs, coiling his tail around a baluster.

"It's not about Lamia. It's about Cassie," Jacob corrected, waving a hand. If Aur or Ezekiel were disturbed by Jacob so casually speaking to a dæmon not his own, neither of them showed it. "She told me that her parents weren't going to come home for Christmas, and her uncle doesn't even celebrate anymore."

Ezekiel frowned. "What the hell's wrong with them?"

"No idea, but that's why I wanted to talk to you. You think that Flynn and Eve can keep a secret?" Jacob asked. "I have an idea."


	18. Nothing Grows When It's Dark

Eve and Flynn _could_ keep a secret, and very well, too. Which was how it came to be that on the twenty-first, the day after they left school for winter break, they were all standing on the doorstep of Cassandra's big, empty house. They were all armed with backpacks full of stuff; Flynn and Eve were carrying a small tree from the ends, with Paznic walking in the middle to support it from the bottom.

Laghu was practically bouncing on his shoulder as Jacob came up the steps and knocked on the front door. There wasn't a wreath on the door, no lights on the outside of the house; it made him feel angry at Cassandra's parents and great-uncle all over again, but it also made him feel that much better about what they were doing.

There was a moment's pause, and then the door rattled, and Cassandra pulled it open. She was dressed in one of those gaudy, colourful sweaters that only ever surfaced once a year at Christmas, pajama pants with dancing cartoon elves on them, and fuzzy red socks. Mel poked her head out the door, too. "Hey, guys. What are you doing…?" her voice trailed off when she saw what Eve and Flynn were carrying.

"We came over for Christmas!" Flynn declared, almost bouncing in place. He was easily the most enthusiastic person about the holiday behind Cassandra herself.

Eve laughed and added, "A little early, but to hell with it, right?"

"Surprise!" Jacob said, trying for jovial but falling a touch short at the look on her face, the wide-eyed shock, mouth open. Even Mel had frozen in place, displaying all the shock that a hyena was capable of. "Cassie? Is…are you okay?" He glanced back at the others, and their mirth was fading as well in the face of her shock.

Abruptly, she snapped out of whatever trance she'd fallen into, and he was nearly bowled over into the tree when she leapt on him in a kind of flying attack hug. Cassandra yammered something incomprehensible in his ear, though it sounded pleased at the very least. "Does this mean we're okay?" he asked, and she nodded rapidly against his shoulder. Mel's tail was flicking double-time, and she had to take the back of Cassandra's sweater in her jaws and tug a few times before she let go of Jacob and stepped back.

"Oh, my God. Oh, God. Come in, come in, come in," she babbled.

Ezekiel was second in the door, and he picked up Cassandra in a hug of his own, making her shriek joyfully. "Aw, c'mon, Strawberry Shortcake, you really think we're gonna let you sit all on your lonesome?" he laughed as he set her down.

"Should we take the tree to the basement?" Flynn asked.

Cassandra whipped around so fast Jacob was surprised she didn't get whiplash. "Tree?"

"Ain't Christmas without a tree," Jacob replied with a grin.

Her eyes welled up, and she swiped at them with the back of her hand a few times before nodding. "Yeah, take it all down to the basement."

Ezekiel ran down the hall and opened the door to the utility room, declaring, "To the Batcave!"

As Ezekiel herded them down to the basement, carrying Flynn's bag, Jacob touched Cassandra's arm. "Hey, are you okay?" he asked, lowering his voice slightly. "I didn't mean to upset your or something. I mean, I just thought that since your parents weren't coming home, you'd want some company."

"Oh, Jake," she breathed, and then her arms were around his neck again, hugging him tightly once more. He wrapped both arms around her waist and rested his chin on her shoulder. "Thank you," she murmured, breath warm on his ear. "Thank you so much." Her hands tightened on the back of his jacket, and he felt her take a shuddering breath against him.

"Please don't cry," he urged. "If you cry, I'm gonna cry, too. I mean it. I'm an ugly crier, too, you don't wanna see it."

She giggled softly, muffled in his scarf, and finally lowered her arms from his neck, taking a step back. Her eyes were still damp, but she was smiling, one hand resting on Mel's head. "Jacob, I…why would you _do_ all this?"

"Why wouldn't we?" he asked in reply. "Cassie, we're your friends. You do get what that means, right? We like seeing you happy, it makes us happy, too. And since your family doesn't seem to care that it's Christmas, we will. C'mon." He slung an arm around her shoulders and walked towards the basement stairs with her tucked into his side; Laghu nuzzled down between Mel's ears, gently raking his claws through her coarse fur.

"Y'know, mate, I'm starting to think that this tree was left behind for a reason," Ezekiel remarked as they came down the stairs.

He and Flynn had set up the small Christmas tree in a corner of the basement. Jacob had found it in the attic when he was looking around, in a box under an old drop cloth. It'd lit up when he plugged it in, and it still had all the pieces, so rather than try to find one in the stores this close to Christmas, they agreed to use that one instead. But now that they'd set it up, he saw that it wasn't quite what he was hoping. It looked very much, he thought, like a larger scale version of Charlie Brown's tree.

Cassandra shook her head as she bounded over to them. "It's perfect, and I love it. Is there a star?"

Aur unzipped Ezekiel's backpack and came up with a shiny silver tree-topper, holding it up victoriously. It looked strikingly bright against his golden fur. "Ta-da!" he declared.

Cassandra squeaked as she took it from Aur, careful not to touch him. "Oh, we need to put this on last," she decided quickly, setting the star down on the table. When she turned back around, Ezekiel was pulling a long streamer of tinsel garland out of the backpack like a magician pulling a chain of scarves. "You brought decorations?"

"Well, obviously. Tree, star, decorations, all necessary items," Ezekiel declared as he finally reached the end of the strand, then took out a plastic container full of blue, silver, and white ornaments and a small package of wire hooks. "Here, Carsen, make yourself useful," he declared, throwing the garland at the geek.

Flynn rolled his eyes but picked up the garland. Koyi took one end in his beak and began flying in circles around the tree, looping it around the branches as Flynn fed him slack. Ezekiel industrially put hooks on each ornament, and as he did, Aur would hang them up on the branches, handing some off to Koyi to put higher-up.

The small container of ornaments was enough to fill the skimpy little tree, and in short order, they had it well-bedecked. Laughing, Cassandra picked up the star and skipped over to the tree. Of course, the flimsy branches didn't do much to hold it up, so it ended up listing to one side; she took a few pieces of tinsel and tied them around the base of the star to keep it from falling off, but it still tilted. Now it really _did_ look like Charlie Brown's tree. But once Ezekiel crawled under the tree to plug it in and the branches lit up, Cassandra looked like someone had just transported the Rockefeller tree into the basement just for her.

"Speaking of necessary items…" Eve dug around in her bag and came up with a bottle of mulled wine. "Ta-da. My dad and uncle each get, like, a whole case of this stuff every Christmas. They won't miss one little bottle."

"Rum-based?" Flynn asked, tilting his head to read the label on the bottle.

"Christmas spirit based," Eve answered with a wink, then turned to Cassandra. "You got a corkscrew around here?"

As the girls ascended the staircase, Flynn slung his backpack up onto his lap and unzipped it, tugging out a large tin container. "I brought mince pies, too, if anyone wants one," he offered, prying the lid off the tin and setting it down on the table.

Jacob leant forward to take one out of the tin, breaking off a tiny corner of the crust for Laghu to nibble on before taking a bite. They were still warm, too. He hadn't had a good mince pie since Nana died nine years ago; it was one thing that Mama had never been able to master, though she made some knockout apple cake. "These are really good, Flynn. Where'd you get 'em?"

"My mom's recipe. My aunt made them, though," he answered. "My parents are overseas. Dad won a bunch of money in a lottery, so he and Mom went on a tour of Europe. Twenty-fifth anniversary present."

"Hell of a gift," Jacob mumbled around a mouthful of warm, sugary mincemeat.

"Fa-la-la-la-la, la-la-la-la," Eve sang as she came back into the basement, walking slowly as she had a tray full of glasses in her hands. Cassandra was walking behind her with her own glass in one hand and the bottle in the other.

They all collected a glass once Eve set the tray on the table, and Cassandra raised hers in a toast. "Merry Christmas, you guys, and…" She paused and bit her lip, and for a moment, he thought that she was going to cry, praying she didn't. If she cried, he might end up crying a little, too, raw as he felt the past few days. "Thank you. Thank you…for everything you did tonight. I don't know what I'd ever do without you. So…to good friends," she said.

"To good friends," they all repeated, clinking glasses.

The mulled wine was warm and spicy-sweet, heat spreading down his throat and through his chest when he swallowed, pooling in his stomach. Laghu crawled down to his wrist and stuck his head in the glass, poking out a tiny tongue to lap at the wine.

Cassandra made a little face at the taste of rum, then turned to look at him. "So, everybody's brought their party favours, Mr. Stone. What about you?" she asked.

"Glad you asked." Jacob opened his bag and took out the brightly wrapped presents, piling up on the table.

Cassandra's eyes widened again, and she pressed a hand over her mouth. "Wait right there!" she squeaked, then scrambled up the stairs two at a time, Mel leaping after her; she was back in under a minute, carrying a large gift bag. "I was gonna give these to you guys closer to Christmas, but let's do it," she exclaimed, setting the bag down on the table and taking four smaller boxes out of it.

"Me first," Ezekiel declared happily, bouncing on his seat. Aur sprang onto the table and began picking through the presents until Mel raised her head and nipped at his long tail; the tamarin squawked and jumped away, clutching a present in his dexterous paws. "Where's your Christmas spirit, Cillian?" he snickered as Aur handed over the box.

Eve reached over to cuff him on the shoulder. "How about we all get our own presents, one at a time, like normal people?" she suggested.

Ezekiel rubbed furtively at his shoulder. "Alright, alright, no need to get violent," he mumbled.

Cassandra laughed and scooted forward in her seat, going through the presents and handing them to each person, and the next few minutes were full of tearing paper and opening boxes, exclamations of delight and thanks. Jacob got a complicated Swiss army knife from Eve, a gift card to Barnes and Noble from Flynn, a new watch from Ezekiel, and a pencil case with a whole set of charcoal pencils from Cassandra.

Once they'd cleared away the mess they'd made, the redhead turned on the TV and the annual marathon of Christmas movies—the original _Rudolph,_ all three _Santa Clause_ , _How the Grinch Stole Christmas_ (cartoon and Jim Carrey versions, of course), and _The Nightmare Before Christmas,_ which immediately had Ezekiel and Flynn bickering about whether or not it counted as a Christmas or a Halloween movie, and whether or not _any_ Tim Burton movie could really be called a 'Christmas' movie. They let the boys argue, their voices melding into background noise.

Jacob sat on the chaise sofa, one foot up on the edge of the table, sipping at his glass, letting the mulled wine warm him from the inside out. Cassandra sat next to him, and he lifted an arm so she could lean against his side. Laghu drowsed atop Mel's head, already full of a buzzing warmth.

"Jacob?" Cassandra murmured, and he glanced down at her. "Thank you. For everything."

He smiled at her. "First one's free."

* * *

Waking up, Jacob wasn't sure where he was for a moment, blinking slowly as shapes resolved in the darkness of the basement, only the soft glow of the Charlie Brown tree lending illumination. Oh, that's right. Cassandra's basement, Christmas party. He'd fallen asleep on the sofa, and the redhead was asleep right there to his left, taking up the rest of the sofa. Flynn was snoring loud enough to wake even the deaf old man upstairs from the recliner. Eve and Ezekiel had taken the beanbag chairs.

He swallowed thickly, still tasting mulled wine in the back of his mouth, and that thought reminded him why he was awake—bathroom. He scooped Laghu onto his shoulder, much to his drowsy dæmon's protest, and shuffled towards the stairs, swaying on his feet. Eve's nicked bottle of mulled wine was a bit more rum than wine, and they'd polished off the whole thing before falling asleep. Despite taking baby steps, he still managed to stub his toe on the bottom step and spent a good thirty seconds sitting on the stairs holding his foot, trying not to swear out loud and wake up the others. Deciding he still had a bit too much of a buzz on, he crawled up the rest of stairs on his hands and knees.

When he came back down the stairs, he saw Ezekiel had woken up, too; he'd moved off the beanbag chair and was, strangely enough, lying on the floor, his head and shoulders under the tree. Jacob was still a little fuzzy from sleep and wine, so instead of asking any questions, he just got down on the floor and lay beside Ezekiel, not quite close enough to touch and stared up into the sparkling branches. The lights were blurred in his drowsy eyes, a tangled, glittering otherworldliness.

"My mum and I used to do this, when I was little," Ezekiel said without looking his way. His voice was low and soft, all of the bold cheekiness that Jacob was used to hearing completely gone. For the first time since meeting him, Ezekiel Jones sounded wholly serious. "Even when we just had one of those tiny ones, she'd hang it up so we could lay under it."

Jacob remembered what Lamia had called Ezekiel before: a pickpocketing foster kid with a crackhead mother and no father. "Where is she?" he asked, pitching his voice low so they didn't wake the others.

He felt more than saw Ezekiel's shoulders move in a small shrug. "Dunno. One day, she went out and didn't come back. Never saw her again. I was seven. Went around the system for a couple years until Mum, uhm, my adoptive mother, Lenore, got me."

Laghu crawled across the branch he perched on towards Aur, creeping down onto the tamarin's shoulder and gently raking his needle teeth through golden fur. The lights caught on each individual strand, making each one gleam a different shade of burnished gold and bronze and copper.

"I…I used to wonder if I had done something to make her leave," Ezekiel murmured. "If she didn't want me anymore or something."

Something in the boy's voice made Jacob think that 'used to' wasn't quite true at all. "I don't think so," Jacob replied.

"Why?"

He turned his head a degree to look at Ezekiel for the first time. He looked much younger than sixteen, and the fairy lights reflected in his eyes looked like stars swimming in a night sky. Time passed so strangely when one was drunk, like loops and spirals that didn't quite connect with each other, so one moment could seem to last an age whilst another passed in the blink of an eye, and this one was more the former than the latter. "You wouldn't do something like this with a kid you didn't love," Jacob replied, casting his gaze back up to the glittering branches; light reflected off ornaments to cast rainbow-hued flecks of translucence on the dark floor.

Ezekiel turned his face back up to the tree. The heat kicked on, warm air ruffling their pajamas and making a few ornaments sway slightly on their perches. "Merry Christmas, Jacob."

"Merry Christmas, Ezekiel."


End file.
